London Irish boss Toby Booth accepted that his side's disastrous start to Saturday's Guinness Premiership clash against Leicester Tigers was to blame for their 35-19 defeat.
The Exiles trailed 25-3 after only 26 minutes and, although they responded well from then on, the damage had been done.
Booth said: "We gave ourselves a mountain to climb and we probably gambled a bit in our 22 for their fourth try which we probably didn't need to do.
"That was the killer blow in relation to losing bonus points but we have a couple of weeks off now and I said at half-time, amongst other things, we needed positives to take away with us because when we pick the reins up in seven days we need to have things to build on for the final furlong.
"And I think we saw that in the second half, there was something to build on, on what was a very difficult afternoon."