That Sunday in Cork the 15 on the park really put in the type of Leinster performance that had almost become a caricature. In fact, there's no almost about it. They lived up to it that afternoon, in all its pejorative meaning, in glorious technicolour. The old Leinster that you could depend on to fold as quickly as Mayo in an All Ireland football final. The Leinster 'Ladyboys' as those folk down in Munster revel in tagging them.

These days, however, even the staunchest Munster follower would have to admit that the boys from the capital are made of much sterner stuff. We've seen numerous examples of late. Like last weekend at the RDS when, down to 14 men on two separate occasions in the second half, they not only hung in there for a result, but also earned a bonus point with two late tries. Or against Bourgoin over at the Stade Pierre Rajon, where they fought back from 14 points down at the start of the second half to almost steal the game. In previous years you'd probably have hedged your money somewhere between the 30- to 40-point losing mark by the end of the game, but not that afternoon and not this particular Leinster side. Michael Cheika and David Knox have obviously dictated much of this change in attitude but maybe their new fitness routines have something to do with it. After all, you introduce a bunch of guys to boxing and wrestling and some of that naked aggression and mental toughness that goes hand in hand with both disciplines is bound to rub off. Yes folks, you read right, the Leinster squad have been going boxing or wrestling once a week since the start of the season, principally as a fitness exercise but they surely don't dismiss the fringe benefits.

Mick Dowling is their boxing guru. The former Olympic bantamweight from Drimnagh puts 10 of the Leinster squad through their paces every week in his gym in Terenure. It's by no means hand-to-hand combat, the players wear protective gear on their head and even then they mostly spar, although they have been allowed have a decent go at each other between waist and shoulder on occasion. Still, boxaerobics is probably a better term for what they get up to, if you excuse the word assimilation.

"We had a full-on spar the other day, we really got stuck into each other but that's not the purpose of it, " says David Blaney, the side's hooker. "It's a huge work-out, you come out of the place and you're absolutely exhausted. But Mick's not training to change us into southpaws or anything, Felipe Contepomi is probably the best example of that."

The Argentinean has obviously been getting some flak for the lame punch he threw at Bourgoin's Alexandre Peclier which resulted in his sin-binning a couple of weeks back, but if boxing is a necessary skill for a modern professional rugby player, then wrestling has a much more practical application. The battle for possession at the breakdown is, when stripped down, basically a man-toman wrestle for the ball.

Tackling someone and attempting to turn them over desires similar skills. "We learn loads of different takedown moves, lifting each other, the touch of death, things like that, " laughs Blaney. "The circuit we do there is actually excruciating, you really know you've had a work out afterwards.

With both of them it's basically just a different way of keeping yourself fit. You can get fatigued, mentally fatigued, if you're doing the same thing everyday but going to do boxing or wrestling is exciting and new, it makes you push that little bit harder."

That little bit extra appears to be making a difference, but it still mightn't be enough to guide them through to the knockout stages of the Heineken Cup. The home defeat to Bath back in October has cost them dearly and the mathematics of the situation right now gives them only a better than slight chance of squeezing through to the business end of the competition. The long and the short of it is that Leinster have to win their final two games of the competition, Glasgow at home and Bath away, if they're to win the pool, but that scenario only comes into play if Bourgoin defeat Bath in France on Friday.

If the English side win at the Stade Pierre Rajon, they'll claim the pool and Leinster will have to gain at least nine points from their final two games if they're to have any hope of qualifying as one of the two best runnersup from the six pools. All of which essentially means that a five-pointer on Saturday against Glasgow is almost a necessity. They did exactly that against the Scots at Hughenden in October and there's no reason why they can't repeat the feat at home, with a 14,000 capacity crowd to cheer them on and with Brian O'Driscoll restored to the backline. They'll have to be careful, as all teams do in this situation, not to put the cart before the horse but they're more than capable of boxing clever at this point in time. They do, after all, know the moves now.