With the U20 Six Nations championship following the senior tournament with a break last week, it allowed Richie Murphy's side a chance to reflect on their opening wins, as well as fine-tune the engine ahead of another Gland Slam push.
Crucially, the fallow week offered them a chance see how they matched up against Andy Farrell's senior squad, with the sides training together at the High Performance Centre in Abbotstown last Friday.
"It was awesome," said scrum and contact coach Aaron Dundon.
"Friday was 15 v 15. We had our attack and they had their attack so we got defence sets and attack sets against them, lineouts, maul. We mixed up the players for the scrums so it was half seniors and half 20s guys."
As well as the experience of mixing and matching across the senior team's training session, the real payoff came with the individual work, with the various units in the team able to pick the brains of their opposite numbers around the minute information, in particular for the technical elements of the game.
"So they can get some feedback from those senior guys and that's stuff that we can’t coach," he added.
"In fairness to the senior players and coaches, they were so willing with their time and they gave some awesome feedback to the players.
"Each week we are starting to see players come out of their shell and show the talent they have. Probably the key thing for us now is making sure that they keep that connection as a team and not work as individuals. Don't lose focus and make sure we keep playing as a team because that is what will bring the best performances."
Just like the senior side, the U20s travel to Italy looking to make it three wins from three in this year's Six Nations, taking on the Azzurri in Treviso on Friday night (live on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player).
However, despite a 100% record, Ireland have had to come through in two shootouts, scoring 44 and 33 points respectively in their opening games, as well as conceding nine tries, more than anybody else so far in the tournament.
Dundon said: "We were disappointed with our first-half performance against the Welsh. In fairness, they played quite well but we were very nervous and it took us until the second-half to settle down and start playing how we wanted.
"That led into the start of the French game. I thought we played really well in that first-half but we left a good few points out there and let the French come back at us. They put a lot of pressure on us in the second-half and they made it a lot tighter finish.
"So we have been working on some areas to improve. We did that last week when we trained against some of the senior boys and that was really beneficial. Hopefully we can correct those areas we needed to improve on for the coming weekend."
And the former Leinster hooker says Italy will be well capable of punishing them, having run both France and England close so far.
"I’ve been really impressed with them," he says of Italy.
"They probably should have won the first game against the French but they lost by one point. Then they had a tough game over in England but their setpiece is really good, they have a really good scrum and maul.
"It’s a massive challenge for us. They have some really big ball carriers, their back row is really big, so the prep we did last week with the seniors will hopefully stand to us."
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Watch live coverage of Italy U20 v Ireland U20 (Friday, 7.15pm) on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player.
