Much like the long faces of the Leinster players, coaches and their not-so-merry band of travelling supporters.

The easy, and even lazy, thing to do after Leinster came up well short against the Cardiff Blues on Friday night is to have a pop at them.

Typical Leinster, eh? Bottlers, chokers, ladyboys . . . whatever adjective you wish to throw at them. But it's not as simple as that. For one, as Will Green pointed out, Leinster were one of the few Irish provinces to take the competition completely seriously.

"There's other people that don't give this league the respect it deserves, " said the prop, after his last-ever game of professional rugby. "Since I've been here, since Michael Cheika's been here, we've respected this league, we've respected the sponsors, we've respected the opposition and we can be very proud of ourselves for that."

Not only that. In the first half of Friday's game, they had enough possession and favourable field position to score the four tries needed to win their second Magners League title. That they didn't manage it was down to two things; an excellent Cardiff defensive line and, as Michael Cheika put it afterwards, "a lack of deception" in what they were attempting to do when they spun the ball wide. Simple as that.

To question their attitude would be wholly unfair. Each and every player on the field gave it their all, the likes of Gordon D'Arcy, Trevor Hogan and Jamie Heaslip, for example, couldn't have applied any more effort had they been playing in the Heineken Cup final.

Even guys like Shane Horgan and Denis Hickie, both clearly out of form, strove manfully to make up for the errors they made during the game.

Form, not commitment, was Leinster's Achilles heel on Friday.

"We've been in a bit of a lull since the Six Nations, " admitted Cheika deep in the bowels of the Arms Park after Friday's game. "It's pretty obvious to see we haven't been playing that well. But you can't hide from that. You've got to keep working on it and hope that it clicks. It's something that happens to teams every now and then. Losing Brian [O'Driscoll] and changing backline combinations has changed things since the Six Nations finished, but you've just got to get through it."

On that theme, the Leinster coach would be quite entitled to have a pop at a system that places far too much premium on the international game to the detriment of the provinces, but he preferred to focus on his own side and their efforts over the course of the season.

"We'll look at a lot of different things over the next couple of weeks, " said the Aussie. "I know, in the overall development of our team and where we've come from over the past couple of years, the commitment level has been excellent.

They did show a lot of fight out there, right until the very end, even when the game was lost.

It's a culture that's building inside of us. We've had three hard defeats since I came here . . . against Munster in the Heineken Cup, Wasps this year and this match. We've got to work from here and use those defeats to ensure we win titles in the future."

He also absolved his captain, now Dr Felipe Contepomi, from any blame following his first-half decision to go for tries rather than points on the board. "Our plan would have been to kick for goal, just like it would have been in any game, but Felipe decided to have a go for the try. That's what captains do, they make decisions on the pitch. You have to have a feel for the momentum of the game.

Sometimes these things work, sometimes they don't . . . but I don't have a problem with the decision."

Listening to him speak so positively, you could jump to the conclusion that he wasn't all that bothered about losing on Friday night, but his chirpy demeanour masked a lot of disappointment. "I'm more competitive than most, losing kills me. I just want to hide but I can't. You've just got to understand that the humility you get from defeat is something that is crucial to building culture. We've been working hard over the last two years to build a culture that represents us properly on the field. It may not always go our way on the pitch but you've got to wear that sometimes. Sometimes you've got to say we got beaten by a better team but we're not going to let that happen again, or we're not going to be beaten by the team at the bottom of the league ever again. You've got that inside you. It's part of a process, you just don't say we're going to win now because everything's OK. I've been there, I coached a team that was building for two years and in the third year we killed them."

Big things promised from Leinster next year, then, and we're expecting a lot from them. The return of the now Leicester-hardened Leo Cullen and Shane Jennings will be a massive boost to a pack that clearly needs an extra bit of muscle while, if they can keep everybody in the backline fit, they already possess the most potent combination anywhere in European rugby. We'll watch them with interest.

The last word, though, to Leinster's three retirees.

Although Will Green and Guy Easterby didn't spend all that long with the province, both contributed considerably to their side's cause and their experience will be missed next season, even if they are replaced by a couple of players with a bit more zip. As for Reggie Corrigan, it's difficult to think of anyone else who's given so much to Leinster in the professional era. He's worn the Leinster shirt for 10 years and, most crucially, he played a vital role in keeping the team together when the departure of Matt Williams, and the botched Gary Ella era, threatened to tear them apart.

It wasn't from watching guys like him that Leinster were labelled with their many unflattering tags.