Michael Cheika smiled as he tried to sum up the performance of his captain Brian O'Driscoll, the Leinster centre visibly ill but still managing to chip in with a hat-trick of tries. The Leinster coach prefaced his remarks by saying he didn't like lavishing too much praise, because O'Driscoll gets it from every quarter.

The Australian nonetheless enthused: "You can't get him off, it's impossible. He's a great player, a great competitor. Of all the things, the skills and the bits and pieces about him, that's the thing I like most; he's a great competitor.

"I really felt our wingers (Shane Horgan and Denis Hickie) and Gordon (D'Arcy) took responsibility when Brian was out on his feet."

Asked to verify just how sick his captain had been during the week, Cheika laughed: "He was sick enough. I think if you go out on to the field there, you might find some of the trace elements. That just shows the courage of the guy. You saw the way he played. In that environment he can still come up trumps."

True to form, O'Driscoll attempted to downplay his contribution, preferring to dwell on the collective: "I'm pleased that we managed to scrape out the five points. It wasn't vintage Leinster but we got maximum points and that's what we said we needed prior to the game.

"Whether the performance is up to scratch (is moot) but we still got all the points. We'll take a lot from that even though we have massive amounts of work on for the week ahead. I think we did an awful lot of sloppy things and struggled but we'll work on that for the next game because we know it'll be a hell of a lot tougher down in Agen.

"(We made) little errors like not putting enough numbers at breakdowns and turning over ball. They're good scavengers on the ground and we're going to have to make sure we resource our ball and take them through the phases. That's where we create our scores from by taking teams through phases."

He couldn't help poking a little fun at himself in discussing his 75-metre run for the first of his three tries: "The embarrassing thing was Rupeni (Caucaunibuca) stopped halfway down and then realised he could catch me."

There were more serious issues for Cheika, notably the scrum, where Leinster endured a torrid time.

"There's no doubt we had problems," he said. "We knew we were going to have them. They are a big, big, big pack. If you just have a look at the players, they just dwarfed us physically. We have got to be smart.

"It's not like all of a sudden we're going to do something miraculous and make the scrum go forward. We have got to patch it up any way we can, use a bit more strategy now we have scrummaged against them. Now we have played against them we'll understand the techniques we'll have to use to let the little men try and have parity. We are going to have to use the technical work we have to do to work out our front row for next week.

"Stan Wright's work in the loose was fine and his scrummaging wasn't that bad. We were under pressure right across the front row. They have international quality in Kees Meeuws and we have to sort that out for the next game.

"The bonus point was important. We have got equal wins but we are two points ahead of them.

"At the same time you have to keep the opposition to zero points. That's the key. We kept them to zero. We knew it was going to be a tough match here and it'll be even tougher next Saturday. They have come here with nothing to lose but there is a bit more pressure on them going back home.

"You have to dig it out."