Game management the difference as Leinster march on

Both Leinster's quarter and semi-final wins in the Heineken Champions Cup can be summed up by their reaction to yellow cards.

If you looked at the bare statistics of Saturday's win against Toulouse without knowing the score in advance, a 19-point Leinster victory, and one that was sewn up with a quarter of an hour to play, it is probably the last thing you'd have guessed.

Evenly balanced on possession and territory, Toulouse outnumbered the hosts considerably in carries (157 to 98), defenders beaten (36 to 15), and even accounting for the fact that they became loose as they chased the game late on, they offloaded more than Leinster on a ratio of 7:1.

The stats don't account for game management though, and that's where the gulf between the sides lay at the Aviva Stadium.

A pair of Toulouse yellow cards resulted in 28 points for Leo Cullen's side, which ultimately proved to be the winning and losing of the game.

It was the inverse of their quarter-final success against the Leicester Tigers three weeks ago.

On that occasion, Leinster were on the receiving end of a sin-binning when Caelan Doris was carded for a high tackle early in the second half, at a stage in the game when the Premiership side were starting to get on top, and having cut the Leinster lead to 17-10.

By the time Doris returned to the pitch, his side were 27-10 in front, and on the verge of putting the game to bed.

Even in a game of 80 minutes, they can be won and lost in a block of 10.

"It was such a tight game, we knew that when we had those windows to take advantage, we had to strike," said captain James Ryan of his side's clinical scoring.

"I thought we managed those parts of the game well when we needed to, taking advantage when they were a man down, and we did it