RUGBY:Initial soundings from the Leinster camp suggest they are not unduly concerned about the ankle injury which forced captain Brian O'Driscoll to leave the field after half an hour last night although they await a full diagnosis today.
"He's been carrying an ankle lately but has been able to play through it but he doesn't seem too concerned about it himself," commented Leinster coach Michael Cheika afterwards.
"But we'll have a closer look at it tomorrow. We have a few bumps and bruises. That was one of the most physical matches I've seen.
"We're happy to win and I thought we adjusted our game well to the conditions. It's not really our kind of footy, it was a little old-school. They were horrific conditions and I think what won it for us was that as the game wore on we made fewer mistakes," reflected Cheika.
"At the start, we made a few mistakes, like kicks out on the full but as the game wore on we made less and less of them."
It still required a touch of class to take Leinster to the top of the Magners Celtic League table, courtesy of Keith Gleeson's fingertip pass inside for Luke Fitzgterald in the 66th minute as Rua Tipoki shot up, the younger winger wriggling out of Shaun Payne's tackle to give Shane Horgan the pass from which he scored his third try in four games. "I don't know where that move came from," chuckled Cheika. "It's a move we do but it wasn't on the game sheet for tonight. 'Gleece' must have brought it on to the pitch himself.
"I'm delighted for our supporters, because I know we haven't won down here for a long time. It was a great experience for the younger boys, like Luke Fitzgerald, Robert Kearney and Johnny Sexton, and I thought they came through it well. They did some good things and concentrated on the gameplan. It's just important that when these situations arise, we keep doing it."
For Munster the disappointment will be acute. Despite a good enough start, they seemed to become distracted by unnecessary niggles. "It was always going to be a tight game and Leinster came up with a good score. Once you get a score on a night like tonight it's always going to put you in the driving seat," said Declan Kidney.
"We'll just look at our own performance and we'll see how we can improve what's under our control. That's all you can ever do . . . They're as tough conditions as you can play in. It was a bit error-prone, and with so much at stake in tonight's game, it was a night for composure, and Leinster showed that a little bit more than we did."
A bitterly disappointed Marcus Horan admitted: "It's hard to take. We didn't do enough to deserve anything out of it. We defended for a lot of it, didn't play territory well enough and didn't adapt well enough to the conditions, and when we had them under pressure made silly mistakes or gave away penalties to let them out."
"Frustrated," by the referee's interpretation of the binding laws at scrum time, which he said prevented Munster from attacking Leinster's scrum, Horan added: "That's only frustration on my part. We didn't deserve to win but it definitely won't damage us moving forward to the Llanelli games. We're not out of any competition yet."