Recent poor performances have seen the Reds slip back in he Premiership and the manager would have preferred to work on problems on the training field rather than allow his international stars to spend time with their countries.
"Maybe the break is good for us," he admitted. "We cannot train with the players, we cannot control what they are doing, we just have to cross our fingers and wait.
"It's difficult when you have a lot of players away. You cannot control them, then you have important games and maybe you will have problems.
"We cannot do much. The players left behind trained with the reserves today and they played head-tennis."
