Richard Wigglesworth says the Leinster 'juggernaut' have learned from their Champions Cup heartbreaks.
Leicester Tigers' head coach Wigglesworth takes his club to the Aviva Stadium on Friday for a quarter-final clash with the Blues.
He was assistant coach to Steve Borthwick last season when Leinster blitzed the Tigers at Welford Road at the same stage of the competition.
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He was also the replacement scrum-half for that game, before calling time on his playing career.
The pair will reunite in the summer when Wigglesworth joins Borthwick's England coaching set-up.
But, as a player, the former scrum-half was in the Saracens side that defeated Leinster in the 2019 final and 2020 quarter-final and watched from afar as La Rochelle also triumphed with a similar power game approach in the 2021 semi-final and 2022 final.
Wigglesworth believes that is no longer a big weakness for the province.
“I would say they have definitely eradicated it, haven’t they? If you look at that La Rochelle final (last May), I watched that one and it was as dominant a game that you don’t win as possible," the 39-year-old said.
“We get all the stats and the figures from that game and it was a game that they, quite rightly, felt aggrieved to lose.
"If La Rochelle are one of the biggest teams in Europe, and they have gone toe to toe with them in a physical battle and should have come out on the right side, then I would say that bit is closed off.”
In terms of the task facing the Tigers this week, Wigglesworth recalled how Leinster took "complete control" of the opening quarter in last year's semi-final.
"They did a job on us early," he said, recalling how Leinster took a 20-0 lead into the break.
“You are coaching against brilliant coaches – Leo Cullen and Stuart Lancaster are just running a machine.
"It doesn’t matter who plays for them, they always win. They have a massive squad packed full of quality.
“We are massively excited by it. We’ve said how big a challenge this is and we are not going to shy away from that. If you are not excited by this, you are in the wrong job.
“They are that good that you can’t really see a weakness. They are so well-coached and they have got such good players.
“We’ve got to play exactly how we want to play the game. Whether that is good enough to compete against Leinster, we will find out, but we are determined to give the absolute best of ourselves.
“We get stuck into battles and that is what we will do on Friday night.”
Wigglesworth paid tribute to Lancaster, under who he won more than half of his England caps.
“He has been great for me,” he said. “I have had quite a few Zooms with Lanny. He really helps young coaches, I know he does that with loads of people and not just me.
“He rang me when we were in a tough spot, which I really appreciated. We had just (had) a couple of heavy defeats after I came in as boss and he reached out.
"So, a sign of the quality coach and person that he is. Yeah, I’m really happy for him but not that happy that I am playing his juggernaut this week.”
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