Saints showed they are no pushovers in Leinster loss, says Lawes

The black, green and gold found themselves 15-0 down during an error-strewn first half, but they kept fighting and eventually pushed their hosts all the way.

Saints even had a chance to snatch victory late on as they pulled themselves back to just three points down with five minutes to play.

But it wasn't to be as Leinster booked their place in the Investec Champions Cup final on May 25.

“I don’t think we ever felt like we were out of the game, to be honest,” said Lawes, who skippered Saints in Saturday’s clash.

“Probably in the second half when they scored that early try, that was probably one of the points where we had to find ourselves as a team – and I think we did that.

“It’s a credit to the players that we can have something like that happen.

"We said all the right things at half-time, we come out and it doesn’t go your way again – to get back on the horse and go back at them, to be able to do that as a team is very good going forward.

“But I think the disappointing thing is we didn’t really test them; like we didn’t really put our game on the park how we wanted to.

"We had a lot of mistakes, dropped a lot of ball, gave away a lot of penalties. You can’t win at the highest level if you are doing that kind of stuff. That was obviously where we lost the game.

"On the plus side, we were able to push one of the best club teams in the world probably and show everybody we are not going to get pushed over by anyone.

"There are a lot of positives to take but it’s a really good learning for us.”