A fourth defeat in a row in the European Champions Cup made for a particularly miserable night in the Aviva Stadium as Leinster started brightly but were unable to keep the momentum going into the second half.
Beyond the result, there was bad news for both Leinster and Ireland as the injury list grew even longer. Mike Ross needed to be helped off the pitch with a hamstring injury, a sight that Joe Schmidt would not have wanted to see as he looks ahead to the Six Nations.
Speaking after the match, Leinster head coach Leo Cullen confirmed that the hamstring had been the reason that Ross needed to come off, and added that "it's intact, at least, but it is a significant strain".
Speaking about the loss, Cullen made the point that Toulon were able to bring on some serious power from the bench in the closing stages, which helped to take the momentum away from Leinster as they looked to hold on to the lead they had established.
"With the power they have coming off the bench, it's a challenge and it's something that we need to look at. It's probably not something that we had to deal with in the past if you go back five or six years [...] we need to reassess where we go in the tournament now".
He added that "it's different, they can sign experienced overseas players that have a lot of test match level experience, and when you add that into the mix of what they're doing it's tough to play against them".
Cullen returned to the theme of examining where the team are as a result of the loss, saying, "we don't make life easy for ourselves because of the first to results, but there was, again, a lot of good things in the first half. It's just just the power and how we deal with that going forward, we need to have a good reassess of where we're going".
For Schmidt, injuries will be a worry as Iain Henderson (hamstring), Robbie Henshaw (hand) and Jared Payne (foot) are all out of action at the moment, while Sean O'Brien has also not seen time on the pitch as an inner-ear issue is set to keep him sidelined for another couple of weeks at least, according to Cullen.
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