Cullen upbeat as Leinster hold off plucky Dragons

At this stage of the season, results are more important than performances.

Leinster very much looked in pre-season form for much of their 34-6 win against the Dragons at the Aviva Stadium, but head coach Leo Cullen declare himself delighted to get in and out with a bonus-point win for the second week in a row.

After a poor first half in which his side laboured to a 10-6 lead, the province looked more assured as they ran in four second half tries, with a second bonus-point win giving them maximum points through two games.

"Listen we're pleased to get the win, five points, that's the most important bit at this stage of the season," the head coach said.

"Going into the game we would have been very conscious of Dragons, they made a lot of improvements, we watched their pre-season games, a lot of you would have seen their game last week against Ospreys and they're showing a real physical edge to the way they're playing the game and they fronted up.

"It was a little bit of frustrating first half, even though we scored two decent tries.

"Second half, the focus was a bit clearer, there was a bit more intent in terms of our carry and work at the breakdown, which gave us some better opportunities.

"To score six tries, overall we're pretty pleased. We've chopped and changed our team a little bit in the first two rounds. We talked about the three academy players starting last week, two of them started today, two more came off the bench in Fintan [Gunne] and Aitzol [King], so there's lots of positives in that sense.

"Specifically today, if you'd offered it to us before the game, we'd be delighted, yeah."

Arguably more interesting than events on the pitch were the scenes in the coaching box, where club captain Caelan Doris sat among the