The A Team: Well-rested Leinster have point to prove

After successive Champions Cup final defeats, there's no doubting where Leinster’s priorities lie this season.

When the province jetted off to South Africa just a few days after their Investec Champions Cup quarter-final win over La Rochelle, they did so without all but two of their starting line-up from that game, with five of their replacements also making the trip.

There was an unusual secrecy around the make-up of that touring squad.

In normal circumstances, Leinster are probably the most forthcoming of the four provinces when it comes to their squad updates, and it was fascinating to see their media department fall silent about what they were getting up to down in South Africa during their first few days on tour.

While Munster published their list of 30 players who had made their flight to Pretoria on the Monday afternoon, just as Ulster and Connacht had done earlier this season, Leinster stayed silent.

The province, it seems, had grown frustrated by the apparent mixed messaging coming from the South African sides this season about their own travelling squads. Give 'em nothing, lads.

Here at home, the future signing of Jordie Barrett and the excitement about today’s Croke Park Champions Cup semi-final drowned out any real interest in which Leinster players had boarded the plane for Johannesburg and kept the social media channels ticking over.

We didn’t find out who travelled until the province published their team news on that Friday afternoon, although most observers could have taken a reasonable guess.

The only people truly in the dark were a handful of All-Ireland League coaches who were left wondering which of their opponents’ Leinster academy crew would be available for that week’s AIL semi-finals.

The touring squad was