JACQUES NIENABER believes there were three reasons Leinster why lost a third consecutive Champions Cup final.

The Blues coach had been brought in late last year after helping South Africa to back-to-back World Cups.

And with Leinster having lost back-to-back European finals, it was hoped the Springbok coach’s arrival would provide the missing piece of the puzzle.

After defeats to Ronan O’Gara’s La Rochelle in the 2022 and 2023 deciders, Leo Cullen’s side were out to claim that elusive fifth star against Toulouse at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium last Saturday.

The sides could not be separated after 80 minutes but while Josh van der Flier dotted down in extra-time to cancel out a Matthis Lebel try, Thomas Ramos kicked three penalties to help the Top 14 side to a 31-22 victory.

Having downed bogey team La Rochelle twice en route to the decider, the Blues fell again to French opposition at the final hurdle.

Nienaber was detached in his assessment of the agonising defeat.

He said: “You try to look at it as unemotional as possible. There’s a lot of things, but I think there’s probably three things that stand out.

“The first one is, did you win the game? No.

“That’s the biggest thing and the most important one. The second one I would say was our discipline.

“Not necessarily discipline as in giving penalties away — we probably were a little bit more disciplined than they were in terms of penalty count — but discipline in terms of keeping continuity with ball in hand.

“We gave too many turnovers away, so that’s what I mean by discipline.

“Then the third is continuity. Our breakdown. Credit should probably go to Toulouse and how they slowed our ball down, so we struggled to generate consistent quick ball.

“Those are the three glaring issues I would say.”

Having suffered another agonising European final defeat, Leinster are under pressure to end the season with silverware.

In addition to the Champions Cup heartbreak, the Blues have been knocked out of the URC in the semi-finals in the last two years and looked on as arch rivals Munster won the competition last year.

Cullen’s men still have a shot at silverware, with Friday’s RDS clash with Connacht their last regulation-round game before the URC knockouts.

Even though last Saturday’s loss will take time to digest, Nienaber is adamant the Blues can learn their lesson and park their pain for the derby with Pete Wilkins’ side, who need a bonus-point victory to have any hope of advancement.

He insisted: “They don’t need to be picked up. You can lose a game on Saturday, but the beauty of rugby is we’ve got Friday night to get right what we’ve done wrong.

“Obviously when you look at a game like this and you lose a final, to say we’re unemotional about it is probably wrong.

“When I say we’re unemotional about it, I’m talking about from a rugby point of view.

“You try and cut all the thrills and spills, cut all the white noise and just look at the game from an objective point of view.

“Did we win the game? Were we physical? How was our physicality, how was our work-rate?

How was our kicking game? How was our set-piece, how was our scrum, how was our lineout launches?

“You literally look at it from that perspective and once you do that, things start popping out — ‘Listen, we have to improve this’.

“That’s what I mean when I say unemotional.

“That’s where the focus is going to go in and we must make sure we don’t neglect the other stuff that was good.”