Leinster head coach Leo Cullen is braced for a backlash from Toulouse when the sides meet in tomorrow's Heineken Champions Cup semi-final at the Aviva Stadium [live on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player].
It's just under 12 months since the tournament's most successful clubs met in Dublin at the same stage of the competition, with Leinster thrashing the five-time champions 40-17.
The circumstances of the rematch are considerably different to their meeting from last May. On that occasion, the French side came into the game off the back of a grueling quarter-final against Munster a week earlier at the Aviva, having gone through extra-time and a placekicking competition in one of the most memorable games in the history of the tournament.
There will be no such fatigue this year, with head coach Ugo Mola resting his frontline players for last week's Top14 defeat to Stade Francais, and Leinster boss Cullen says he expects a much different Toulouse side to return to Dublin on Saturday.
"Last year they played the 100 minutes [against Munster] and maybe the travel, there definitely is a little bit of that [fatigue]," Cullen said.
"I've heard some of their comments this week about that, maybe they got some things wrong around the selections leading into that game [v Leinster], or that sequence of games.
"There’s little subtleties to the dynamic but it’s on the day isn’t it? You need to be prepared to deal with whatever comes your away on any given day."
Like Leinster, Toulouse bring a 100% record into the semi-final, having swept Munster and Sale in the pool stage, before easing past the Bulls and Sharks in their two knockout games.
Against the Sharks they showed their ability to play both sides of the game, battling patiently in a physical first half to lead 14-10, before opening the contest up in the second half, and padding out their 54-20 win with four tries in the final 15 minutes.
Cullen says he expects a similar approach on Saturday.
"It's a big, physical pack of forwards that they have, so I think they'll be very direct when they have the ball. I think they’ll be pretty direct and confrontational. They kick the ball a fair amount. I know Toulouse’s reputation is sort of free-flowing, offloading rugby, but I think they’ll be pretty pragmatic, particularly at the start of the game.
"As the game starts to open up then they start to move the ball around, and you see a lot of their points come late in games. So I think they’ll try to take us on physically, which is good because that’s what we want as well; a good physical challenge for our guys and that’s what you want to do, you want to test yourselves against the best teams out there.
"It’s a brilliant challenge, isn’t it? Plenty of quality, you can’t switch off for a second with some of the players that they have, game-changing players and all the things we’ve talked about over the last week, and even before that as well."
Leinster will be without Robbie Henshaw, after the Ireland centre picked up a quad injury this week, but relief comes in the return of both Josh van der Flier [below] and Ryan Baird from injury, with Van der Flier in from the start at openside flanker, and Baird included among the replacements.
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As well as Henshaw, Leinster are dealing with the absences of Johnny Sexton, Rónan Kelleher and James Lowe.
"I'm more worried about what we do have than what we don’t have," Cullen added, when asked about their growing injury list.
"It's the nature of the season, isn’t it? Like, it’s such a long season, there’s so many moving parts and that’s the amazing thing about this tournament.
"There’s going to be injuries along the way, there’s going to be disruptions along the way and how you deal with them over the course of the season is going to be the key.
"There’s plenty of experience in the group now that have had to deal with disruptions at different stages through the course of their career. That’s just another part of it, isn’t it?"
Dealing with the power of the Toulouse pack will be key, with the second row combination of Richie Arnold and Emmanual Meafou weighing in at roughly 270kg combined, while Thibaud Flament - who started for France at lock in the Six Nations - provides extra bulk on the flank.
However, captain James Ryan (below) says his side can't afford to spend too much time focusing their efforts on dealing with individual threats.
"It's more the Toulouse pack as a whole," he said.
"They have a number of guys who are very strong in the contact area, whether it's in the maul or over the ball. [Jack] Willis is another guy. We wouldn't pay too much attention to one player, but we definitely respect him and aware of his strengths."
The province have won each of the last three meetings of the sides, with two of those being European semi-finals.
But despite that great recent record, Cullen says history will count for very little at the Aviva tomorrow.
"I'm not sure we have a magic formula, I can tell you about games we lost against Toulouse as well.
"They're a great team, an amazing club since the tournament began. We were talking about that on Monday, when Toulouse won the first final against Cardiff, and the types of games they played.
"It was always based around strong forwards and very, very skillful backs, so there's lots of things we would have tried to take from Toulouse over the years.
"We definitely don't have a formula, but they're a club we admire greatly."
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