Swamped by young autograph hunters at the end and grateful to have seen their galacticos remain intact, Leinster made off into the Galway night even happier to have pilfered a bonus point win at the death.

In doing so they had shown some internal fortitude as well as opportunism after a searching examination by Connacht, who again exposed Leinster's difficulties up front, especially at lineout time. In point of fact, they might even have kicked to the corners and gone after the Leinster more than they did.

"When the game was level and we were down to 13 men we responded well," said a reasonably satisfied Michael Cheika. "I thought we changed our body language, kept the ball and controlled the game to get our scores."

The Leinster coach was also encouraged by the largely impressive return of his frontliners.

"A lot of the guys got back into the groove fairly quickly, and we made some good interchanges," he said, and emphasised that Connacht were nobody's mugs anymore.

"These boys are going to beat a lot of teams down here. They're quite well structured, they tackle hard and they run hard."

Brian O'Driscoll also readily conceded that the final scoreline scarcely did justice to the match. "It was very tough. People will read the papers tomorrow and see the score, but the scoreline flatters us. We were only three points ahead with just a few minutes to go thanks to Darce's drop-goal."

As to his own well-being after his seasonal re-appearance, O'Driscoll said: "I'm grand. You feel the bumps and bruises at the start of the season a bit more, but nothing more than that."

Chris Whitaker's shoulder injury is also deemed to be nothing too serious.

A rueful Michael Bradley reflected that, "we were very competitive for 70 minutes, but then a couple of key issues helped swing the game away from us. After a bad start we very comfortable at half-time, 13-7 down with the wind behind us in the second half.

"Leinster weren't causing us too many problems and I think if we'd kept our composure we'd have won the game. We did for 30 minutes, but not in the last 10."

Lamenting Mark McHugh's needless sinbinning, and the resultant three-pointer that was also missed, Bradley hailed the crowd's backing, but at a time when he felt Leinster were still a little rattled at 16-19 entering injury-time wondered aloud as to why the referee fleetingly signalled a Connacht penalty before bringing his hand down again.