Bernard Jackman believes Leinster's team selection on their recent two-game tour of South Africa was a risk worth taking, ahead of Saturday's Investec Champions Cup semi-final with Northampton (live on RTÉ 2 and RTÉ Player).
The province fell to second place in the BKT United Rugby Championship following a winless trip to South Africa, where they shipped heavy defeats to both the Lions and the Stormers.
Head coach Leo Cullen wasn't taking any risks ahead of this Saturday's semi-final at Croke Park; of the starting XV from their Champions Cup quarter-final win over La Rochelle, only Jason Jenkins and Ciarán Frawley featured in either Johannesburg or Cape Town.
It means that the vast majority, and possibly even all of this weekend's starting XV to face Northampton Saints at Croke Park will have gone three weeks without a game.
The province employed a similar selection strategy last season as they tried to compete on both fronts, and although they ended last season trophyless, Jackman believes Cullen was right to leave his frontline players at home, particularly given the layout of the URC this year.
"To come back with zero points will be disappointing but they have to manage this end of the season," Jackman told the RTÉ Rugby podcast.
"It's a different end of the season schedule to last year, where they took a bit of a gamble in that semi-final against Munster and rested some key players for the Champions Cup final the week after.
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"The nature of this season is the Champions Cup final is finished before the last round of the URC, so Leinster probably are very likely going to be in the top two in the URC, they may even get back to top spot, because they won't have to rotate as much any more.
"It looks like they've given themselves the best possible chance to be ready to play Northampton, beat them, and then they've got some rest into the international players.
"They have to be mindful of their load over the course of the season as a whole. I think they can go very strong for every game to come, which for the other teams, that's a daunting prospect."
While the side that were beaten by the Lions in their first game in South Africa contained some of the first team regular squad members like Jenkins, Frawley, Luke McGrath, Harry Byrne and Cian Healy, Cullen rotated even further for the 42-12 defeat to the Stormers, where eight of the matchday squad had played 10 or fewer times for the province.
And although Jackman believes their rotation was warranted, he says the Leinster coach may be concerned at how easily his second string sides have been beaten on South African soil since the start of the URC.
"I think that they probably thought they had a squad that could get something out of the Lions game, that was a stronger squad.
"Robin McBryde and Jacques Nienaber were down there for that week and they they flew home to start prepping for Northampton.
"Leo [Cullen] would be disappointed in that, if you look at the last three seasons, South Africa has been where they've blooded a lot of young players, and will be disappointed that some of them haven't stepped up to be a little more competitive.
"In the first half against the Lions, Bulls last year, and the Stormers [this year], they were blown away, and then settled into the game. But the games were already gone away from that," he added.
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Watch Leinster v Northampton in the Investec Champions Cup semi-finals on Saturday from 4.45pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app and listen to updates on Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
