Leinster assistant coach Robin McBryde doesn't sense any Six Nations hangover from the side’s Irish contingent as focus quickly shifts to the Champions Cup and Saturday’s visit of Harlequins to Croke Park.
The province had 23 players on Simon Easterby’s squad with Hugh Cooney also training with the panel as a development player, but while the Triple Crown was secured by Round 3, their championship hopes – and Grand Slam ambitions – came unstuck in devastating fashion against eventual champions France in their penultimate fixture.
"Expectation is one thing, at the end of the day they won the Triple Crown," McBryde told RTÉ Sport ahead of their round of 16 encounter with the English side.
"I know they probably had their eyes set on something else but you’re not in control of everything.
"They'll learn their lessons and they’ll learn them quickly. There’s still a lot to play for this season. You can come out of the Six Nations and sometimes you feel a little bit jaded but they’re professional athletes so hopefully they channel that frustration positively and just really let rip for Leinster until the end of the season."
While the former Wales hooker always has an input on team matters, it’s fair to surmise that his fingerprints will be more visible than usual for this weekend’s game.
With Leo Cullen and some of the coaching staff travelled to South Africa for the URC clashes with the Bulls and the Sharks, McBryde and others remained at base camp.
"That was the purpose of it, for the boys to start turning their heads towards what comes next.
"Try and refresh them a little bit... having an opportunity to discuss lessons learned from their previous experiences, etc.
"I’d like to think that everybody had their opportunity to contribute to the way that we move forward together.
"Listen, the boys have been great, and that win at the weekend (against the Sharks) has just given everyone else an extra bounce in their step."
McBryde paid tribute to the travelling party and said watching the final moments of the win over the Sharks and the celebrations afterwards gave him "goosepimples."
"You keep a track of players playing minutes and you take that into consideration. There’s a lot of things to be taken into consideration really," he said of that squad split.
"The boys throughout the Six Nations, they’ve been chomping at the bit for an opportunity to play as well so there’s a lot of it in the mix.
"With regards to how it played out, so chuffed to see firstly against the Bulls to push them so close. It was a disappointing end to the game, there’s a hell of a lot of good work gone in to the previous 80 minutes.
"Then against the Sharks, to actually learn some of the lessons from the week previously with a pretty young, inexperienced group, to go there and beat the Sharks, the amount of feel-good factor that’s given to anybody who is connected to Leinster is fantastic.
"To us here, we made reference to it today (Monday), they probably started a little bit of that momentum building towards the end of the season.
"It’s great and they deserved that for the hard work they put in."
One other players putting the hard work to be involved this weekend is Rónan Kelleher who missed the final three games of the Six Nations with a neck injury.
A Leinster injury update on Monday said that a final decision would be made towards the end of the week, and McBryde said it was a positive sign that he’s yet to be ruled out.
"They’re always really hard things to predict, how quickly someone is going to get back to full strength from that type of injury.
"All the signs are hugely positive. He’s getting stronger day by day so everything is positive in that regard."
Watch Leinster v Harlequins in the Champions Cup on Saturday from 2.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app.
Listen to live commentary of La Rochelle v Munster (5.30pm) and updates from Leinster v Harlequins (3pm) in the Champions Cup on Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1.
