Leinster remain hopeful that Brian O'Driscoll will be fit for their Heineken Cup tie in Castres tomorrow night. The Ireland centre has travelled to France after being named in the starting XV alongside his midfield partner Luke Fitzgerald, but he still faces a fitness test on a hamstring injury, with Felipe Contepomi ready to replace him.
Victory for Leinster would tighten their grip on Pool Two, extending their current six-point advantage over the 2007 European champions Wasps, who host Edinburgh on Sunday.
Leinster beat Castres 33–3 in Dublin last weekend, but their technical consultant, Alan Gaffney, accepts there are areas for improvement. "There is no doubt that we probably played the game a bit narrow at the weekend. That is something we have addressed again," he said. "We have got the ability, we train and we know what we want to achieve. We put a few things together that we were happy with, but not enough.
"In terms of the passing last week, it was one of the worst performances that we have put in this year. We work on it every training session so there is no real reason as to why it happened. A lot of the passing was thrown into the body, which is more a timing issue. By passing the ball the way we did, into the body and into the shoulder, it took all the pace out of what we were trying to do."
While Leinster look to continue their march to the quarter-finals, Pool Four strugglers Scarlets are playing for pride against Ulster in tomorrow's other fixture.
Currently bottom of their group, Scarlets have not won a Heineken Cup match since beating Munster in the 2007 quarter-finals. And they will be without the Wales international Morgan Stoddart, who suffered a knee injury during the 26–16 defeat by Ulster in Belfast last Friday. No Welsh team has lost 11 successive Heineken Cup games, but that unwanted record is now staring the Scarlets in the face.
"We don't want to be looking at an 11th straight defeat. We have to bounce back, it is as simple as that," said the Scarlets and Wales fly-half, Stephen Jones. "We have to front up and improve our performances. We have got a lot of work to do, there is no question about that.
"We know the performance against Ulster last Friday was not acceptable. Individual errors are far too high in our game, and if you can't get past three phases you are not going to get anywhere. We lost the ball too much in contact. If you don't win the contact area, you don't win the game."
A victory for Ulster would keep them in quarter-final contention, although the group looks certain to be won by either Harlequins or Stade Français, who meet at the Stoop on Saturday.
