RUGBY: LEINSTER v LEICESTER:IF TOBY Flood's experience of Jonny Sexton before 19th March was primarily sourced from footage on a laptop, it is now very much empirical. As the two outhalves prepare to renew acquaintances on the same patch of grass where Sexton lorded it over his opposite number in Ireland's recent dismantling of England, the Leicester Tigers outhalf appears to be operating on the rather sensible basis that to be forewarned is to be forearmed.

“I have a huge amount of respect for him,” says the 25-year-old former Newcastle player, the younger of the duo by 27 days, but a player with far more top-level rugby behind him.

“When we saw the selection for the Ireland game we knew they were going to come out playing.

“He links so well with those guys around him. He wants to go across the pitch and run loops and dummy short lines. The best thing for us is to close down his time and space because if we can make it difficult for their nine and 10 to impose themselves on the game, we can be in a position to stop them at source and cut down the space for their outside backs. Sexton has got a good all round game but I think he’s certainly a guy who if you let run the game, if you let drive the game, he can really be a huge part in that.

“We’re going to have to make his life as difficult as possible because if you let him run around the corner, let him throw shapes, let him throw it over the top, he really comes into his own.”

There’s a modern tendency to presume professional sportsmen become mentally scarred by defeat in much the same way an onlooker to a major disaster might be, but it’s a mistaken belief. England’s 24-8 defeat at the Aviva Stadium hasn’t dominated Flood’s thoughts to any great extent not least because, a missed penalty in the first half aside, his individual performance wasn’t all that catastrophic.

“No, there’s not been any issue of me laying awake at night questioning what I’m about,” he says with a smile. “We weren’t good enough and sometimes you’ve just got to take that on the chin and try to learn from it. If anything, those days are a bit more valuable than the days when you put 30 or 40 points on teams because you learn a lot more about yourself.

“It was our first real taste of that in quite a while, but you’ve just got to deal with it, acknowledge it and understand it. The good thing was that we came straight back to Leicester and played Bath straight away. It can be invigorating in its own right coming back to your club because it’s a change of scene and a change of lifestyle. And the banter with the boys was there too.

“The nice thing is that in the rugby environment it’s quite cut-throat with its sense of humour and sometimes that can brush away any kind of ailments you might have. It was good to have that and have that kick up the arse; you’re back involved with Leicester and that’s the way things go.”

Did Geordan Murphy play any part in the ribbing? “Geordie’s more English than me I think,” laughs Flood. “Besides, when he’s on the crutches you can get away from him easily.”

His own mental state seemingly sorted, Flood doesn’t have any worries for his half-back partner, Ben Youngs, on the 20-year-old’s return to a venue where he was yellow-carded for mindlessly throwing the ball away, and then replaced by Martin Johnson when his time in the bin was up.

“Ben’s been fantastic since that game. He’s got the mental aptitude to bounce back. I don’t know whether it’s because he’s incredibly strong minded or he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. The good thing for him is that when things go wrong, all you can do as a player is back your instincts and his instincts are just so strong.”

All told, the benefits of being forewarned might as well be Flood’s motto heading into Saturday’s game. As well as his first-hand experience of Sexton, he also now knows what to expect from the broader Aviva Stadium experience.

“The ferocity of it all, the aggression they showed, how they behaved and how they went about their work – that’s what I learned from the game. Having watched Leinster this week, I think they’re pretty similar to Ireland. They’ve got the same sort of defensive strategy of holding you up in the tackle, they want to win the collisions in the tackle and all that sort of stuff. I think we have to be ready for that physical challenge and I think we have to be ready for that first 25 minutes.”