Jones lauds Dragons' fire
The Dragons had to dig deep to take the spoils against the Pro12 title hopefuls, spending much of the second half defending their line and only conceding a solitary penalty. The efforts paid off when flyhalf Jason Tovey, who in the first half followed wing Ashton Hewitt in crossing for a try, booted a pair of penalties to secure a morale-boosting victory.
"The attitude was epitomised by the chase of a kick at the end. The players wanted it. We were after a good team performance and we got it. Leinster put us under a lot of pressure and Ian Madigan gave them an edge in the second half in their attacking game while Ben Te'o is always a handful.
“But we dealt with the threats and defended manfully on the try line a couple of times. All in all, considering the conditions, a 23-13 score is pretty good," Jones said.
The Dragons win was the perfect tonic after the demoralising Challenge Cup thrashing at Sale the previous week, with the team showing mental strength to survive the second half onslaught.
"Often if there are three or four penalties [in the 22] you crack but we didn't and that was really pleasing to see. The game that we don't want to mention at Sale, was about us psychologically not turning up but the attitude we saw against Leinster from everyone was what you'd expect.
"I expected a response and the chat in the changing room is that we now need to go to Ulster on Friday and really have a crack," he added.
Newport had to cope with Rynard Landman playing as a makeshift blindside flank after Lewis Evans was forced to pull out with a recurrence of a calf problem in the warm-up.
"Leinster had a lot of their squad missing but the truth is, we are down to the bare bones and could have done without Lewis going down while Nick Crosswell is a tough Kiwi but had a foot problem. He seemed to limp through the game, we tried to get him off but he didn't want to come off. We are down to the bare bones but full credit to the group," Jones stated.
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