Connacht head coach Andy Friend says he has no complaints over the yellow card shown to Leinster scrum half Jamison Gibson-Park in Friday evening's Heineken Champions Cup last 16 first leg.

Leinster will bring a five point lead into next Friday's return tie at the Aviva Stadium after a 26-21 win at the Sportsground, while Connacht fought their way back from 23-14 down to keep the tie alive.

The western province scored their third try while Leinster were down to 14 men, Gibson-Park sinbinned for a dangerous tackle on fellow scrum-half Kieran Marmion on 56 minutes.

The Ireland international's shoulder made contact with the face of Marmion, leaving the Connacht man with a bloody nose.

After a consultation with his TMO David Rose, referee Karl Dickson chose to yellow-card Gibson-Park, with the collision not deemed to have had a high degree of danger, preventing it from being a red.

Connacht's Tom Daly - who was suspended for this game - was red carded three minutes into Connacht and Leinster's previous meeting a fortnight ago for a similar offence, but despite that, Connacht boss Friend believed the officials came to the correct conclusion this evening.

"I thought it was a yellow," Friend said.

"I think there's so much conjecture around these things at the moment. To me, there was one angle that made it look not good, there was two other angles where you thought there was not much more he can do.

"Now, he definitely hit shoulder on face but I reckon we've got to be careful there's a game. I didn't think there was any intent.

"I didn't think there was any intent in Tom Daly's tackle a few weeks ago [against Leinster]. There was different circumstances. This one had a second defender in there so you can understand a player, Kieran, falling.

"I was OK with it, to be honest, but you just don't know at this stage whether it's going to be play on, yellow card, red card. I thought the right decision was made."

The Australian did voice his displeasure at the final result, believing some key Connacht errors proved crucial over the course of the 80 minutes.

However, he said his team's ability to fight back from nine points behind in the second half gives them a real chance of causing an upset in the return tie on Good Friday.

"We are in it but we didn't come here to lose tonight, we came to win. We had a few chances and we missed them, unfortunately.

"We are five points behind now but we can take a lot out of that game. That's really important to stress that. There was some really good bits in it. There were bits we still need to get better in but we know what we need to do to fix that.

"We've got seven days to turn that around and head up to the Aviva and hopefully be better again.

"One thing to be really pleased with is that in attack and defence we saw some of our best moments this year against what is a very good rugby side. If any of our players were in doubt of the systems we've put in place, that is now dispelled.

"It's about everyone sticking to system and doing that. We did it tonight for large chunks and I thought we were very good," he added.