Johnny Sexton put on a brave face, but it was hard to mask the dejection in the aftermath of their Heineken Champions Cup final defeat to La Rochelle.
The four-time champions were once again undone by the power and physicality of Ronan O'Gara'a La Rochelle, who struck for the winning try in the 79th minute to seal their first ever major title.
And although Leinster led for the majority of the game, they lived off scraps, with the French side worthy winners having outscored the favourites by three tries to nil.
"Everyone is pretty devastated in there," said Sexton after the game.
While Arthur Retiere's winning try came with 80 seconds remaining, by the time Ihaia West had converted to make it 24-21, the clock was in the red, and referee Wayne Barnes blew the final whistle.
"It's a tough way to lose, in the last second, and not even have a chance to come back and try and win the game.
"A couple of slips, and fair play to Retiere for reaching out. It was tough to take. Obviously there were a lot of things that didn't go our way in the last 30 minutes when we were in control of the game. That's the devastating bit."
Leinster rarely looked like scoring a try, aside from a big stand on the La Rochelle goalline late in the first half, before ultimately settling for three points.
"We had chances to score, probably, at times, and we could have been a bit more aggressive and gone for tries on a couple of those penalties, because they were repeatedly infringing. But we decided to keep the scoreboard ticking over, but hindsight is a great thing, everyone is an expert.
"We made the decisions, and we were in control. A couple of big moments, a couple of big decisions that put them in a position to get into our 22.
"Fair play to the lads, how brave they were and how well they defended. I thought we were going to hold out, but we didn't."
Head coach Leo Cullen echoed the sense of dejection in the Leinster dressing room.
It's a sickener, for starters," he said.
"The lads that worked incredibly hard this year, the players, the backroom. There's a lot of sacrifice that goes into getting a team to this point. We had amazing support this year, and it's great to be at this stage.
"It's hugely frustrating from our point of view, whatever you want to put on it, because it means so much to us. It means so much to all of us."
The final minutes were played out just short of the Leinster tryline, with La Rochelle pounding away at their defence, with tackle after tackle holding them out, only for their discipline to keep giving O'Gara's side second chances.
"Look, you can't fault the effort, the spirit. To hold La Rochelle out for the last however many minutes it was, was incredible," Sexton added.
"You can't fault the effort, at times, it comes down to the bounce of the ball and a couple of decisions.
"We will look at them but we will also look at ourselves about some of the inaccuracies that we had."
And although Leinster remain firm favourites to pick up silverware this season with the URC playoffs, Sexton admits a fifth Champions Cup title was the top of their priority list.
"We judge ourselves off both but ultimately, yeah, I can't contradict what I said yesterday, this is the one that everyone wants to win.
"This is the one we desperately wanted to win and we've come in 60 seconds of it, it's a pretty bad dressing room to be in at the moment.
"We have to dust ourselves off. It's an incredible tournament, so hard to win, to think of all the good teams are in it and only one gets to walk away with the prize, La Rochelle got to do that today."
