Josh van der Flier says Leinster want to take away Connacht's belief by not allowing them into tomorrow's Champions Cup second leg at the Aviva Stadium.
The Ireland flanker and his Blues colleagues know that the westerners will grow in confidence if they are allowed into the tie with a similar start to last Friday's first leg in Galway.
The aim, therefore, is to kill off any chance of giving Connacht a foothold in the tie as the underdogs look to quickly erase their five-point first leg deficit.
"It's the same with any team we play - I'm sure they have full belief within their group," said van der Flier, who has been in top form this season.
"If you're ever in a situation where you're the underdog, the longer you stay with a team the more you believe we can actually do this.
"Playing anyone at home you want to get that good start, take away their belief, don’t give them a foothold in the game. That will certainly be a focus for us.
"We talked a bit about their mindset and how they might be looking to approach the game.
"Individually and as a team we look to channel that focus into our performance and it takes away that mental side of what they're thinking, whether they believe they are underdogs or whether they should win or not win.
"I’d see that as kind of irrelevant once we get down to playing the game. It is important to be aware of the occasions that it is for Connacht, what it means to them and their supporters.
"It’s important to have that in your mind but when it comes down to game day this week, it’ll just be about us putting in as good a performance as we can and hopefully that is enough to put us through."
Van der Flier was happy enough with the 26-21 victory at the Sportsground, though Leinster will look for a more cohesive display this week.
"We are so aware of what it is like to play away in Europe. I don’t think we ever thought that we were under pressure to win or anything like that," he stressed.
"Certainly we were saying that we were in for a really tough battle and it was going to be very hard to get a result there and we knew we had to dig deep to get a performance.
"That's the way it turned out. It ended up being a very tough game but we managed to get the win. We'll be expecting another tough game on Friday."
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