‘It’s done with now’: Leo Cullen draws line under difficult week with Connacht win

Leo Cullen could breathe a sigh of relief at the end of what he admitted was a difficult week after a record-equalling 50-5 win over Connacht in the Dexcom Stadium on Friday night followed Tadhg Furlong’s acquittal of foul play the day beforehand.Munster’s Gavin Coombes accused Furlong of grabbing him in the groin area during Leinster’s 24-18 win at the Aviva Stadium last weekend, but the Leinster and Ireland prop was unanimously cleared of any foul play at an independent disciplinary hearing on Thursday.Furlong is thus free to play in Ireland’s forthcoming Nations Championship games and Cullen declared the saga to be closed.“It’s a difficult week, I think everyone needs to be respectful of that for all parties involved. Listen, it’s done with now, we just need to move forward.READ MORE“We’ve had a different group getting ready for a game this week and we’ve just tried to make the game the main thing and making sure it stays the main thing.“For us, it’s moving on, we don’t have a game for a little while now but it’s closed from our point of view.”The Leinster head coach was also delighted with his team’s performance, which dampened the spirits of the home team and home crowd in a capacity 12,500 attendance on a wet and windy night in Galway, all the more so as Furlong is one of 17 players in Ireland camp.Joey Carbery was the only player retained from the win over Munster and delivered a virtuoso man-of-the-match performance, contributing 20 points to his side’s utterly dominant display.“The performance is what you look at first and I thought there was great commitment in a pretty short week. So huge credit to everyone, the coaches were all excellent in terms of preparing the lads, because we knew there was a lot of changes coming, you get a little bit of a head start last week as well,” said Cullen.[ ‘It hurt me a lot, it definitely fuels me’: Joey Carbery driven to rejoin Ireland squadOpens in new window ]“So I applaud the players in terms of the mindset they had all week, in terms of what they brought to the game.“They’ve been itching to get an opportunity again, obviously some guys playing for the first time for Leinster in Connor Fahy and Alex Mullan, you have a few guys playing for Leinster for the first time this season who’ve just, for different reasons, missed out on selection, injuries or whatever else.“And then off the back of a lot of these guys being involved in two games in South Africa where they’ve lost games narrowly, which were there for the winning.So yeah, it was good prep leading into the game and it was great to see they got lots of rewards out there as well.”Much better-oiled from the outset, Cullen credited forwards coach Robin McBryde with the clever trick play off a lineout, which led to their second try. As well as landing seven from eight in such capricious conditions, his only miss being from the touchline, and finishing a neat 9-11-10 blindside try from a five-metre scrum, Carbery varied his game deftly in tandem with Fintan Gunne. “I thought he was great, in terms of game management, kicking, everything,” said Cullen of his prodigal outhalf, “and just that relationship with Fintan is positive because they’ve trained a bit together over the course of pre-season, since Joey’s been back in the mix, and it’s lovely to see him go well”.[ ‘For me, so many people are stuck in the past’: Ronan O’Gara on his coaching journeyOpens in new window ]For Connacht, this was a salutary night in front of an expectant crowd, which confirmed that their depth is not on a par with Leinster as the absence of their eight Irish squad members was much more keenly felt.“The first half obviously was the killer really for me,” said Stuart Lancaster, after this team turned around 21-5 behind after playing into the elements.“When you play against Leinster and how good they are and how good they are defensively, if you fall behind, you’re forced into a game where you’re having to overplay to catch up really and I think our error count was so high in the first half.“Leinster had the wind, and obviously the rain came in, and I just felt that we gave them too much in the first half.“So as a consequence at half-time, you’re trying to plug the dam a bit really. Second half, we made a bad job worse, so there’s not many positives.”The Connacht captain, Paul Boyle, candidly admitted: “Everything got away from us. They won every facet of the game. I can’t think of one we won.“It’s finding out reasons why that will be our challenge. Obviously we’ll have a big review, but it’ll be a bit of soul searching now because they won every facet of the game.”