Second-half composure pleases Leinster boss Leo Cullen

Leinster head coach Leo Cullen praised his side's composure as they avoided a potential banana skin to go back to the top of the BKT United Rugby Championship table.

The league leaders produced a strong second half to defeat Benetton 47-18 at the RDS, outscoring the Italians 26-0 after the break to secure their bonus-point win.

It was the province's first game for four weeks due to the Six Nations break, while it was also a first URC outing since their New Year's Day defeat to Ulster in Dublin.

And with that in mind, Cullen was content to get through the 80 minutes with maximum points.

"Overall we're pleased,"he said. "Parts of the first half were not quite there. Maybe that's to be expected but as the game goes on, I think there was definitely better intent."

Benetton have been the surprise package of the season, coming into the weekend in second place in the table.

Marco Bortolami's side ran out of gas in the final 20 minutes, with the visitors' squad heavily depleted due to the Six Nations.

And Cullen says his team were quite wary of an upset.

"They're a very physical team aren't they? They recruit pretty well," he added.

"Obviously, they’ve a good chunk of guys away with Italy but if you look at the players replacing them, they’ve a fair bit of international experience in their team. It was always going to be a tough challenge.

"Our guys have worked hard over the last couple of weeks, because they know they need to play well in this window.

"If you look at the two teams, Benetton probably bigger, physical, more mature team and yeah, they were strong in some of the contacts. We were sluggish at the very start – it was a pretty soft score: easy gain-line, get us on the edge, score, made it look very, very easy".

While Leinster