Seán O'Brien believes Leinster’s problems in South Africa began with a lack of "physical intent" and expects that to be rectified this weekend.
The defending BKT United Rugby Championship lost to Stormers, 35-0, and Bulls, 39-31, picking up just a solitary try-bonus point from their trip down south.
"The first week was a difficult watch. What were the learnings from there? I suppose the physical intent part," the former Ireland and Leinster forward, now the contact skills coach at the province, told RTÉ Sport.
"There was a lot of scraps on the ground from kicks and battles that we lost.
"It was nice to see that the lads got back into the fight last weekend.
"That’s the main one, the intent part around winning scraps and physically being at the level that’s required in this competition, especially away from home."
The 38-year-old was one of the backroom staff, alongside kicking coach Emmet Farrell and S&C coach Charlie Higgins, who remained in Dublin with the wider squad.
Asked about the coaches’ role in making sure the players were at the right pitch for two games that were always going to be physically challenging, he said: "It is our job to make sure that that’s there.
"We’ll have more of a debrief of that on [this week].
"You would get the feel, as a coach, of where the lads are during the week and what their intent is like, although you are not trying to take lumps out of each other you are trying to get that little bit of a spike that you need leading into a game.
"Obviously it was the first game in the URC for the majority of those lads.
"Were they undercooked? Did we need another game under our belts?
"That’s a question we asked ourselves, all those things are irrelevant now. We just need to move on quickly."
Hugo Keenan is injured but the likes of James Lowe, Jamison Gibson-Park, Garry Ringrose, James Ryan, Dan Sheehan, Andrew Porter, Jack Conan and Tadhg Furlong may come back into the mix for Saturday’s 5.30pm kick-off against the Sharks at Aviva Stadium.
"We’ll have a chat," said O’Brien about the squad selection against the touring side who lost to Glasgow and drew with Dragons.
"It will be nice to have a couple of them back maybe and involved and add that bit of experience to the group and try and take it a step further.
"We know what [threats] the Sharks pose.
"They'll be disappointed with what they’ve done so far and will want to finish their tour on this side of the world on a high."
Leinster, second last in the table, lost just two regular season games in the competition last season and are already playing catch-up in terms of getting a top seeding.
Asked if he’d take a scrappy victory to get them up and running, the Carlow man said: "You just want to win the game, first and foremost but obviously you want to put in a performance you are proud of. The lads will want to do that.
"We want to see that as coaches.
"The first home game of the season, in the Aviva, with a big crowd there hopefully so we want to put on a performance.
"If we do win 6-3, well, that’s another tick for us but we’d like to see a bit more in the game, depending on conditions and everything but it’s meant to be a good week and hopefully a good weekend."
Had to call in a few reinforcements to take on Leinster's Lions 🤝 pic.twitter.com/T4Ram9a95b
— The Sharks (@SharksRugby) October 7, 2025
John Plumtree’s Sharks, meanwhile, may be able to call upon a number of Springboks, who sealed the Rugby Championship title by beating Argentina in London at the weekend.
Eben Etzebeth, Ethan Hooker and Makazole Mapimpi may feature for the visitors.
O’Brien said: "They are a bit like that [hot and cold], that’s the DNA.
"But they can hurt you pretty badly when they are actually on.
"We have to prepare as best we possibly can, first and foremost, and whatever they throw at us, hopefully we will have answers for.
"But this week in particular it’s more about focusing on ourselves and what we can bring to the table and making sure we have covered all our detail, that we get our pitch right when we get to the game on Saturday in terms of the physicality of it.
"They will be hurting from the tour already having drawn and lost a game so they will want to finish very strongly.
"But they are a big pack of forwards, they have extremely quick backs, typical of South African teams at the minute."
