Johnny Sexton is relishing a reunion with Ronan O'Gara after the Corkman's La Rochelle side booked their place in the Heineken Cup final against Leinster.
La Rochelle beat Sexton's former club Racing 92 in Lens yesterday, claiming a tense, tight 20-13 victory to reach the final for the second year running - and after they lost to another French side, Toulouse, in last year's decider.
So Sexton knows that O'Gara - his former rival at Munster as a player and, later, his coach at Racing - and La Rochelle have unfinished business in Marseille on Saturday week.
But Leinster will also have revenge in mind, having lost to La Rochelle in the semi-finals last year.
“I missed out in the semi-final last year against him," Sexton pointed out after Saturday's impressive victory over Toulouse in their last four encounter at the Aviva Stadium.
The Ireland out-half had been stood down after the quarter-final win over Exeter due to a series of head injuries.
"Look, he has done really well with La Rochelle, he has built a team there now and they will be hurting (after last year's Champions Cup and Top 14 final losses)," Sexton added.
"They will be doing everything they can - we’re going to have to be at our very best to get the win.”
Sexton's fervent hope is that Leinster have learned all the lessons needed to return to Europe's summit in less than a fortnight's time.
He thinks back over his storied career that has seen him win 11 trophies with the province, among all the other silverware he has accumulated.
Good memories. Great memories, in plenty of cases. But Sexton also remembers the finals lost, the big games lost, and given how much of a competitor he is, they loom large in his mind.
The last three seasons have brought the promise of another Champions Cup triumph to go with the four already bagged, but Leinster have fallen on each occasion - a final in 2019, quarter-final in 2020 and a semi-final last year.
And now his province is back in the final for a sixth time, seeking out a fifth star for the blue jersey in Marseille.
"You look back at all of the finals you’ve been a part of, there’s so much learning, and a lot of PRO14, URC finals – the competition’s changed its name so many times I don’t know what it’s called – we’ve been in loads of them, we’ve won loads and we’ve lost loads," said Sexton.
"In Europe, we’ve got a good record but the days when you don’t turn up in the finals they hurt you and live with you probably more than the victories.
"So you try and get that experience into the group and explain that you need to take the occasion out of it and just really go out and try and play your best.
"Look, no-one hurts more than us when we don’t win the big games.
"The meetings that we have to go through on a Monday morning when we trawl through the footage – it’s tough, you know? Because they can be your mistakes or guys close to you and it is tough to watch.
“That’s what we have to do and we have those lessons on the wall of our training complex.
"Hopefully we don’t have any more lessons to learn, hopefully we have learned from all of them and get a good performance out there in the final because that’s what you need to do on the big day.
"Get as close to your best as you can.”
Sexton turns 37 in July and, previously, had confessed that he thought that maybe his last chance for that fifth final victory had gone when Saracens overpowered Leinster in Newcastle three years ago.
Asked when that thought entered his mind, the club skipper replied: "At the final whistle.
"It’s so hard to get to a Heineken Cup final, just ask a lot of the other teams that are trying to do it. When you let one go and you’re in your early 30s as I was at the time, you might not get another one.
“So, I'm very pleased to be part of this group and to help get us there. It’s a special moment for everyone and it will be incredibly special if we can match Toulouse and put five stars on the jersey."
He believes Leinster have more quality in depth now to equal that record than they had at St James's Park.
Sexton points to the skill of forwards like Tadhg Furlong and Ross Molony in producing superb passes, as was the case in the first half in Saturday's 40-27 victory over Toulouse.
His hope that the outcome will be different this time boils down to this - “That experience," stressed the Dubliner.
"We’ve been desperate to get back here to try and right that wrong - not wrong, but right that occasion in 2019.
"We just feel we didn’t get our best performance out there on the day, and obviously Saracens were an incredible team.
“But I think the guys just have more experiences over the last few years.
"The calibre of player that we have now, you look at our pack and how good they are and dynamic they are.
"So yeah, I think our squad is different now. I think we can rely on our second/third choice players better than we could in 2019.”
