Johnny Sexton, Robbie Henshaw, Seán O’Brien, Devin Toner, Dan Leavy and Rob Kearney were among those missing from last weekend’s win — as well as Jack McGrath.

But unlike the other five, the Lions prop was not in the sick bay. McGrath “came through unscathed” in his return to action against Ulster earlier this month, but Ed Byrne was chosen ahead of him when it came to the visit of the four-time European champions.

Byrne was on the bench for the December back-to-backs against Bath, but McGrath was unavailable then after undergoing hip surgery. This time was different — with the 25-year-old selected on merit ahead of the 53-times capped Ireland international.

“Our motivation is the team, the team has to perform for all of us,” said Leinster scrum coach John Fogarty. “It’s an uncomfortable conversation, for sure, you do care about the player an awful lot, you understand what he has delivered in the past, you don’t want to lose out on anything either.

“It is a difficult conversation, but I guess that’s part of the job for them and for us.”

There will be more difficult conversations this week ahead of the clash with Wasps in Coventry on Sunday, a game that can earn Leinster a home quarter-final.

Robbie Henshaw, Rob Kearney, Seán O’Brien, Devin Toner and Dan Leavy are back in training but no one is guaranteed to step right back in.

“First of all, the players in the team performed really well [against Toulouse],” Fogarty said. “To shift someone out, and make way for someone returning from injury isn’t necessarily what we want to do.

We want to pick the best team that we can to play Wasps to get the home quarter. Jack McGrath was just about back last week but we didn’t shift players out of the way — players were performing quite well. We believed they could add to the performance against Toulouse and he didn’t get in. The same mentality will be adopted this week.

With the Six Nations just around the corner, Joe Schmidt may have some say in who is thrown back in against Wasps, but McGrath will expect to be back in the mix at Test level either way.

Fogarty admits that it can be “tricky” to balance rewarding the good form of players and irritating those who are dropped, but the team’s interest will always win out.

“You want to make sure your squad is in a good place and that means all the squad, every one of them,” he said. “If they are performing really well, we see them improving and working hard on the game, adding value, it is going to be very tough to dislodge a player.”

Once fully fit, McGrath is likely to be back challenging Cian Healy for the number one shirt, but Leinster want Byrne to continue to push his case.

Rugby is a squad game now more than ever, and Fogarty admits that letting players down gently is a skill that coaches must learn — quickly.

“As a player, I tried to understand the coaches that dropped me — there were quite a few of them. Trying to understand the reason as a player helps you be OK with it then, because it helps you understand the bigger picture,” Fogarty said.

“Leo is really, really good at the big-picture stuff and letting players understand where they’re sitting right now.

“If one of the best players is not performing, bumbling along, he’s not improving and he has to understand and know that he has to continue improving, so he’s good for us and Ireland.

“It’s the same with an academy player, if he’s just floating along thinking: ‘It’s great, I’m here, just waiting for an opportunity’, he has to understand and know. Selection is a brilliant tool to straighten bodies out.”