Leinster far from perfect despite 100% record

While they've racked up 16 wins out of 16 so for this season, a look under the Leinster bonnet reveals plenty of room for improvement.

To simply glance at the final score on Saturday, a six-try 36-10 win against a side like Racing 92 would appear to be as emphatic as it gets.

Four tries in the final 15 minutes of the game put an artificial shine on the performance though, where they encountered some familiar issues.

Their scrum continues to be inconsistent, giving away a couple of big penalties which fortunately Racing couldn't punish, following on from games against Glasgow, Ospreys and Gloucester where they've also encountered issues in the front row.

Likewise, conceding a maul try to Racing will sting, having given up two penalty tries last week at Kingsholm.

The penalty count is becoming a real issue. They gave up 10 penalties in the opening half alone against Racing on Saturday, and although their discipline improved after the break, you can add their total of 14 to the 30 they gave up in their previous two games. The 138 penalties they've conceded in 12 URC games ranks as the sixth most in the league.

"We play ourselves into trouble which probably leads to a lot of those penalties," Leo Cullen said of their poor first half discipline on Saturday.

On a whole, the positives heavily outweigh the negatives. Garry Ringrose seems to be playing the best rugby of his career, embracing his new role as a regular captain, while James Ryan is looking more and more like the player who burst onto the scene in 2017 with two huge defensive interventions in his own 22 on Saturday.

For all of their frustrations on Saturday, it was the pace of their play early in the game that ultimately left Racing jaded and chasing shadows in the final