Home is Where The Heart is for Leinster - two years has been too long says Ireland's summer captain

Absence makes Dan Sheehan’s heart grow fonder.

Because having initially been told Leinster would only be taking a one/year break from the RDS.

The stretching of the timeframe to two years at The Aviva has turned too and has, maybe, been a bridge to far for fans.

The Blues are back, however, facing Cardiff on Saturday. There is a party atmosphere expected, the noise levels will be Richter, Sheehan can’t wait.

"Yeah, I think it's hugely exciting. When we first heard that we were going to be moving out of the RDS, it was probably put to us that it would only be a season and now it's been two full seasons.

“Obviously, everyone has a lot of great memories in the RDS and in the Laya Arena, so there's great excitement to make sure that we hit the ground running and create that sort of home fortress feeling again, because, like I said, a lot of us made our debuts or early Leinster days were in the Laya Arena.

"I think there's a huge buzz and it's definitely been a theme over the last few weeks to make sure that we hit the ground running and we're looking at this Cardiff game coming up on Saturday to make sure that we get the buzz going.

"I think the ticket sales are pretty good, and we should have a full house there on Saturday, so everyone's looking forward to.

Leinster will host Champion Cup games at the Laya Arena

"Definitely, from a player's point of view, it's definitely something that was chatted about in the changing room.

"We didn't want to be playing in a half-full Aviva. We'd rather be playing in a full Laya Arena, which is definitely much more exciting.

“It's a closer, more intimate feel and I think we all sort of look back on nice European days in the Laya Arena and hopefully we can replicate the same, because we don't have a whole lot of fixtures coming up before Christmas, but the first few that we'll have will be special."

Sheehan toured South Africa with Ireland over the summer, standing in as captain for Caelan Doris.

"It was good. It was almost like a carbon copy of the summer tour two years ago with the same places, same hotels, but I think it was definitely a worthwhile experience bringing the full squad.

"Obviously, the results were disappointing. We didn't get more out of them. I thought there were a lot of positives in it, but we still need to make sure that winning games is what we're looking at and not at performances.

"Performances are great, but we need to get more points out of it. But I thought, in general, bringing the whole squad and making sure that we stuck together was great.

This time last year was quite disjointed with all the different groups of players coming back from various different international camps, Lions and lads who stayed.

"I thought we really used the time well to make sure we're trained together and hopefully we can see a bit more unison now when we're all coming back together and playing this week."

It was a good tour off the field too.

"We had a nice golf day in Steyn City on the Wednesday, which got a good buy-in the first week.

The LIV Golf was there, I think, only a couple months ago. We had a great day out there.

"We did sort of a scramble tournament and those days were great. I think we had nearly 30 players playing or 24 players playing. It was a cool venue, to be fair.

“Myself and Gus (McCarthy) won the second scramble, but not the first one. I think it was James Ryan and Alan Spicer were the main contributors to the first Steyn City winners, which was a surprising combo. Not sure if there was a bit of a magic pencil in there. We have to look back.

"There was the game of the Traitors going, which caught a bit of attention, proper cooped up in a hotel. It was a great experience and Ciarán Mangan and Fintan Gunne as Faithfuls won it.