As I write this, I have just spent an hour or so in front of the box with Sky Plus allowing me to inspect the damage in Cardiff in slow motion. Conclusions? Was we robbed? No, definitely not. The best team on the day clearly won. But looking at the score-line, you might be forgiven for forgetting that at 50 minutes we were still very much in the game.

It will be someone else's job to write the preview next week, but it is relevant to our expectations for this week to examine what went wrong.

So I'll blame the referee! No, to be fair, I thought Wayne Barnes had a pretty good game and was consistent throughout. What I did notice though was a number of very streetwise Osprey moves. They have a very interesting view of offside at the ruck, which Mr Barnes allowed them to adopt. Particularly interesting was the planned move that would have brought the first try for Jonathon Thomas if it hadn't been a forward pass. The two Osprey second rows were standing well offside and strolled forward to block our tacklers and thus leave a gap for Thomas to burst through.

That was only one of a number of occasions when the back foot of the ruck appeared to have a different definition to the one I am familiar with. As I say, Wayne Barnes was entirely consistent, and they played the referee a lot better than we did.

We were unlucky to lose Neil de Kock at half time, and Chris Jack a couple of minutes later. Then Fabio Ongaro took an almighty bang and instead of going off and allowing his more-than-competent young replacement Andy Kyriacou to come on, he continued playing, and with two "not straight" lineouts (one of which was indeed blatant) gave Mr Henson the pleasure of scoring once again, and that completely opened the floodgates.

<Try to stick to the point, Jonjo> Right, so what has this to do with playing a different team, in a different competition, in a different venue? Well, everything and nothing. Nothing, in the sense that it is a completely fresh start against a completely different side. The score-line starts, as is traditional on these occasions, at 0 - 0. Everything, in the sense that in sport, as in so many other things, the state of mind is all important.

Cast your mind back to those appalling defeats by Worcester, London Irish, and Harlequins when they couldn't buy a win at Tesco. When we have what should be a guaranteed 5-pointer, we usually find a new and ingenious way of losing, sometimes spectacularly. I believe that the relevant word is "hubris" (damn silly sounding word, though). Another way of putting it might be "Pride goes before a fall." You may remember that less than a week ago people were talking about Cardiff as being our best chance to get silverware this season.

Leeds are playing with their backs to the wall. They know all about relegation, and I am sure that they do not want another spell in Division 1, so they will be playing for their survival in the Premiership. I am worried by the fact that they are so far below us at the heady heights of 7th in the table that we will not take them sufficiently seriously as a threat. As has been proved throughout this season, there is very little between any of the teams. They will have enough motivation for both of us, they are fresh from an impressive win over Budgies, and they know that Sarries can be more than a little fragile. They will come fast out of the blocks and try to get a good start on us, and then hang on.

We have a harder job to get our act together, but it is absolutely critical for the rest of our season that we knock Leeds into the middle of next week. We have to look at last week and move on. We have to hit Leeds so hard that they are reeling after 20 minutes. And we have to forget the Ospreys until we have sent Leeds back up the M1 with their tails between their legs. If we do that, I believe that we have a real chance of ambushing the Ospreys, aided by the return of Hilly, Cencus and SuperKev.

You see, the point is, it is really hard to focus only on this Sunday, but unless we do, I fear the very worst. Losing at home to Leeds at this point will feel a lot more humiliating than losing to Wales in their National Stadium

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