Battle-hardened.

Leinster Rugby endured more disappointment last weekend after the Irish province lost their third successive Champions Cup final.

Despite getting the better of French opponents Toulouse on multiple occasions over the last few seasons, Leo Cullen’s side once again fell at the final hurdle despite impressing throughout the pool stages and knockouts.

So why do Leinster keep failing?

Ronan O’Gara led La Rochelle to victory in Leinster in the previous two finals and he believes that they are potentially victims of their own success in the pool stages.

“When you play the best Top 14 team and you play them in a neutral venue… Leinster, so many of their games are either at home or in the Aviva,” O’Gara told Off The Ball.

“They might play a big game or two a year out of that, which doesn’t help them at all, I don’t think, when it comes to the really tough games.

“They have enough class for all those games, it’s just when it comes to a team that are as good as them, how do they continuously learn from coming up short?

“I suppose maybe the fact that Leinster weren’t ‘on’ in attack and the fact that maybe – as all great teams do – they build their form enough for winning on a defence, and you can see that Leinster have given a lot of time to that.”

What do you think? Does he have a point?