Despite much endeavour, the Bulls were their own worst enemy as lineout woes and errors from key playmakers combined with the luck of the Irish to hand Leinster a runaway victory in front of their home fans.

It was an inauspicious start for the visitors, with centre Canan Moodie being shown a yellow card for an intentional knockdown just 90 seconds in.

The Bulls weathered a storm on their line to win a penalty and advance up the field. Now red-hot on attack, rush defence from Leinster forced a rare error from Handre Pollard. The defence hacked the ball through and centre Tommy O'Brien opened the scoring.

Leinster's second try came from Jamieson Gibson-Park's vision. The mercurial No.9 took a quick lineout, throwing a massive 30m pass infield with calculated abandon. A run from Hugo Keenan did most of the damage before Rieko Ioane touched down in the corner.

The Bulls put themselves under pressure with several lineout errors. As a result, all the rugby was taking place in their own half. Under pressure, fullback Willie le Roux shot out the line for an intercept attempt, only to deflect the ball and earn himself a yellow card. Off the back of that, multi-phase play saw Jack Conan bash over from close range. Sam Prendergast added the extras to go 19-0 up.

Comfortably up, another Bulls infringement saw Prendergast point to poles to add three more points.

Finally, the South Africans began to turn scrum dominance into territory, but accuracy let them down. Pollard overcooked a penalty kick to touch to sum up the Bulls woeful half.

In the second stanza, the hosts drove home their advantage with another string of phases that saw a rare snipe from eventual man of the match Prendergast result in another try.

The behemoths of the Bulls bench rumbled on, and scrum penalties began to roll in. Centre Harlold Vorster was ruled held up by referee Andrea Piardi and the replay clearly showed the ball grounded over the line, which everyone saw except the TMO.

Finally, 62 minutes in, the Bulls were on the scoreboard via Moodie. The maul from the attacking lineout went nowhere, but a powerful Moodie did as he pumped his legs from 5m out to crash over.

And they broke into life. The Bulls began to win the collisions and increase the tempo. The tireless Ruan Nortje would slide over after some enterprising play, but the TMO pointed out a marginal offload by Moodie. This was not a day of calls going the Bulls' way, and the try was scratched out.

Ten minutes remained for the Bulls to salvage something. But the contestables continued to go Leinster's way and a final bludgeoning would see Harry Byrne put the icing on the cake for the Irish giants.

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