At the time, he felt that the detachment could possibly offer him an advantage on the day, allowing his head to remain cool while all others were losing theirs, but it didn't quite work out like that. Now, he readily admits he took a bit of flak for his stance before that much hyped game but that really, there was no way around it.

"I think I got a bit of criticism last year saying I was a bit detached from it all, but you can't pretend, " he insists, looking forward to his fifth game against Munster. "If I'm not from here I can't pretend I am from here. Players will say 'he's a bullshit artist, what's that about?' But now that there's a bit of personal history in the game, I can genuinely start to say that I feel much more a part of it.

That's me growing up as a coach as well.

Any time you face Munster it's a big battle and now I certainly understand more about it. The intensity that those games bring, you can't help but get caught up in it. I myself really like playing against them, it's a great challenge. I like their style, I really do. They're tough, they're hard, they don't complain when it's tough and hard against them and I like that.

I think I'm going to understand a little bit more about it, too, by having the Thomond Park experience during the week."

Just as it's easy to see why he didn't want to rush in and nail his blue colours to the mast last season, you can also understand why he now has a genuine sense of the rivalry. His four games to date against Munster have all been physical, interesting encounters, probably as good a set of fixtures as we've ever seen between the two provinces through the ages.

It started with a 33-9 pasting down in Musgrave Park, a game that David Knox added a little fuel to beforehand by admitting that he was more than a little perplexed as to why a one dimensional outfit like Munster had fared so well down the years.

Then, on New Year's Eve, the tables were turned as a pumped-up Leinster, and a pumped-up Felipe Contepomi in particular, gave Munster a lot to think about in a 35-23 victory at the RDS, while most of the country knows what happened in the Heineken Cup semi-final in April. That just leaves Leinster's Magners League victory in October, another evening when Cheika's men thoroughly outplayed Munster and forced their opponents into a bout of serious introspection.

All told, and even taking that harrowing Heineken Cup defeat into consideration, Cheika's record against Munster is better than most coaches in Europe and listening to him offers a clue as to why his side have managed to beat the continent's best side comprehensively on two occasions out of the past four. "From what I've learned about Munster, they always have a little trick up their sleeve, " says Cheika, who's just skimmed over the tape of his side's recent 27-20 victory over Munster. "They're a very mature side, they think about their game, they think about their opposition and how they're going to target us. They'll probably be thinking about whether Contepomi is playing or not and how they structure their game accordingly."

In his two Munster recruits Stephen Keogh and Trevor Hogan, who must be seriously relishing their playing at Thomond Park, Cheika has two living examples of the work ethic that helps make Munster what they are.

"They (Keogh and Hogan) prepare for games well, they do a lot of work, " he observes. "It's something that we at Leinster have worked hard on over the past 18 months. We've tried to do a lot more of it, players taking ownership of opposition scouting, making sure that everyone understands their opposite number and what they might do. We've got a lot better at that and Trevor and Stephen are very much team leaders in that respect."

With a battling away victory in Agen still fresh in the memory, Cheika is keen to add Thomond Park to the list of away venues that Leinster have escaped from with victory, but he feels the inter-player rivalry will be a bigger factor on Wednesday than the sod the game is being played on.

"The Thomond Park factor is interesting but the more interesting thing for me is the players that are direct counterparts in the Irish set-ups, or the Irish colleagues playing against each other. It's going to be a very intense, vigourous game." It certainly promises to be, what with Jerry Flannery hoping to be on the Munster bench after a couple of months on the sideline, Felipe Contepomi a possible starter for Leinster after four weeks off, and as Cheika points out, all the other little match-ups - David Wallace v Keith Gleeson, Denis Leamy v Keith Gleeson, Donncha O'Callaghan v Malcolm O'Kelly - to name but a few.

Just as well the Leinster coach has caught the bug. If he was still immune to the whole thing by now, you get the sense he'd be an outsider forever.