Robbie Henshaw was certainly paying attention last April when his angry and frustrated captain, Isa Nacewa, told reporters after their Champions Cup defeat to Clermont Auvergne that he wanted his Leinster team-mates to bottle the pain that they were feeling.
Having trailed by 12 points at the break of the semi-final at the Stade Gerland the Blues got to within three points of the French club before eventually going down to a five point defeat.
Henshaw revealed today how the loss was used as motivation heading to Sandy Park for the first of this season's back-to-back pool games.
"It put down a kind of a marker for us in and outside the camp," Henshaw said first, of Sunday's 18-8 victory over Exeter Chiefs, "To show that we're putting everything into Europe this year and we want to go one step further than we did last year.
"Obviously for a lot of us in the squad the disappointment of last year in the semi-final, the loss to Clermont away, is still vivid in our minds. I think we use that going into crunch games and we use that to drive us on and to hope we achieve our goals and go on a step further."
Plans for the Dublin clash with the English Premiership champions and leaders this Saturday afternoon at the Aviva Stadium looked to have been scuppered slightly after the province were forced to stay an extra night in Exeter.A six-day turnaround was tight enough as it was before the squad's flight home was cancelled due to bad weather conditions but Henshaw insists that it won't affect their preparations.
"We were due to be off yesterday, it just prolonged our stay. We were fairly tired after the game so we just took it easy and called it a night early. It was fairly low key after the game but everyone was really delighted with the win and I think that the home support that travelled as well over was great. We're really thankful to the fans for making the effort to come to what was a freezing Sandy Park."
