Sean Everitt admitted a 10-minute second half spell in which Leinster scored three tries ultimately cost his side dear as they slumped to a 33-31 defeat at Hive Stadium.  

The scores were evenly poised until tries from Jordan Larmour, Jamison Gibson Park and captain Jack Conan put the Irish province in control. 

It was too much for Edinburgh to claw back, despite late scores by Duhan van der Merwe and Matt Scott, as they opened their United Rugby Championship campaign with a defeat. 

Here's what Everitt made of the performance. 

The third quarter was costly? 

I thought the guys did well to keep Leinster out of our 22 for long periods of time. So that's a massive positive for me. But getting 37 per cent territory in the game does eventually take its toll. Games are won on set-piece, disciplined territory and defence.

The middle part of the second half is where they scored their three tries unfortunately. It came from them putting in good kicks behind us and exposing us in the backfield. I's something that we need to work on and it was something that was our strength last year.

Does it hurt to score five tries at home and lose?

It is very sore because we've been criticised for not scoring tries and I'd like to look at it as a positive. To score five tries against the Leinster team is a good effort from the boys but we've also got to keep teams out. We weren't able to do that today. I think if we had got more positions in the 22 we might have been better.

Maybe we would have got six which would have won us the game. But we couldn't do that. and it wasn't down to discipline. It was a disciplined performance from us. We gave away five penalties when most of the game we spent in our own half.

The guys are to be commended for that. I think our lineout execution let us down. Set-piece is also a major contributing factor to winning rugby games. I think we lost four and we got held up in the maul. So that makes it five out of 14 [set-pieces]. You're not making life easy for yourself.

We were out-kicked and they kept on turning us which put us under the pump.

Some soft tries were ultimately the difference, is that frustrating? 

Yes, it is. Unfortunately, teams do make errors and I suppose they'll be rueing the opportunities that they never got as well. So it works on both sides. It's something that we need to work on and have consistency in going forward.

How is Matt Currie after he limped off? 

He came off with a hamstring strain, we're not sure how serious it is. Hopefully it's not and hopefully he can jump on the plane [to South Africa] on Saturday, I suppose.

Leinster were missing so many top players - a missed opportunity?

I think we all know that Leinster have got depth in their squad. If you look at their back line, Garry Ringrose, Jamison Gibson-Park, Luke McGrath, Sam Prendergast who's going to be a future Irish player, Ross Byrne, they're also full of internationals.

So there are a lot of positives that we can take out of this game. Obviously we wanted the result, we believed that we could have got the result, but there is some pleasing stuff.

What was your assessment of Ross Thompson's first start at 10? 

I think it was difficult with Leinster’s defence. Jacques has done a great job with their defence, he's been there for a full pre-season now. He didn't have that opportunity last year so they were a lot sharper, they put us under pressure.

It's probably a game where we should have kicked more because there was backfield space available.

We all know that with line speed you need numbers on your feet so you're going to be exposed somewhere and perhaps we didn't manage it that way. But Ross and Ben will learn from this experience and get better.