Leo Cullen admitted his thoughts immediately turned to next Sunday's Champions Cup opener against Wasps after Leinster's patchy Pro12 victory over Scarlets at the RDS.
The hosts ended Scarlets' six-match winning run with a 19-15 win, and Cullen stressed his side will take time to gel as their World Cup stars return to the fold.
“It was tough out there," said the former Ireland lock. "We’re happy to get a result. It wasn’t perfect, we didn’t expect it to be perfect, so we’re delighted to get a win. We take a break from the league now, into Europe for a couple of weeks, and we’ll reassess where we are in the league post those two games.
“I’m trying to park this game in my head – I’m already thinking, ‘what time are Wasps playing at this weekend?’.
“We had two really good battles against Wasps last year, they’ve recruited very heavily over the summer.
“They’ve got a lot of threats across the board so it’s going to be a really tough challenge for our guys."
Leinster follow up their showdown with Wasps in Dublin with a trip to Bath, and Cullen has been pleased with the contribution of his entire panel as the Blues prepare for a crunch period of games.
“We want it to be competitive," he said of his squad. "We’re into a big block of games. It’s important that we have faith in guys to play and we have that competitive environment in training as well.
“Scarlets are very aggressive at the breakdown, they're borderline on many incidents, the way they play the game. We tried to manage that in the build-up to the game. It wasn't a surprise to us the way they approached that area. It was frustrating to play against at times but we need to be more accurate in some of the things we did.
“We’re always expecting a bit of rustiness at this stage of the season. I know it’s game seven but for a lot of players it’s their first game back here so we were expecting it to be a bit disjointed. We’ll take a win, move on, and get ready for the next challenge."
Isaac Boss echoed his coach's sentiments, as he talked up the positives of a difficult contest. “We’ve been training hard together all week," said Boss.
“Maybe the ball was a bit greasy, it might have made the handling a bit tougher, we tried to play a bit, but you’ve got to give them a lot of credit as well.
“We knew it was going to be a tough game. We knuckled down and ground out a win. They’ve been going really well this season. There’s a few sore bodies in there right now but we’ve got a longer turnaround [for the Wasps game] so we’ll be doing our best to freshen up.”
The loss of Rob Kearney to a suspected hamstring injury was a sour note, with Cullen hoping he will have enough time to recover for the visit of Wasps.
“It didn’t look great, we’ll get it assessed. He pulled up straight away, so we’ll wait and see, get a scan and see how it settles down. The only good thing is that we’ve a nine-day turnaround."
