While Cullen didn’t reveal how many of his squad are currently in self-isolation, the latest batch of testing has weakened his hand for the forthcoming duel with the Top 14 outfit. Montpellier have encountered their own Covid issues but — for the time being — Leinster are still due to depart for France tomorrow.

“The medics are working away with the HSE and EPCR [European Professional Club Rugby] in the background. Out of respect for that, we’ll just leave it with them for the minute. We got the all-clear to go training today [Tuesday], which was good. For us as players and coaches, we’re trying to get on with preparing a team. It’s a disruption. It’s not ideal, like you’re seeing with other sports,” Cullen remarked at a virtual media briefing yesterday.

“We’ve just been trying to get on with the game we have. We’re due to travel on Thursday and at the moment we’ve got clearance to travel. That’s the plan at the minute. Again, I don’t know enough from their [Montpellier’s] end. I saw their statement and it’s reasonably vague as well.”

Given their understandable reluctance to confirm which players have had positive Covid tests, Leinster also haven’t provided an injury update ahead of their anticipated visit to Montpellier in the second round of Pool A.

It is unclear whether Johnny Sexton (knee and ankle) and James Ryan (head) would be available for selection, but Jack Conan was pictured at training yesterday.

Before Cullen is in a position to finalise a match day 23, his squad will be tested daily by Leinster’s medical team and the province will be doing everything in their powers to avoid conceding a 28-0 walkover to Philippe Saint-André’s side. Should his hand be forced, however, Cullen will have no issue with calling upon his young Academy hopefuls in the same way Munster did against Wasps.

“For Europe you were allowed to have a very extended squad. We have 60-odd players, so we’ve been lucky. So many of our guys in that 60 are academy guys. For this period we actually just decided to move a lot of those guys back down to Energia [Park] to train down there separately. We’ve tried to make some of those precautions over the last couple of weeks just in terms of that forward planning piece,” Cullen added.

“We’d have a lot of confidence, similar to what Munster had. It was great to see some of those guys go so well. A lot of those guys we would have seen at underage level. Scott Buckley, I met when he was much younger down in Kinsale with his grandfather. It was amazing to see him go in.

“That’s one of the things that excites me most about doing the job that we do. Seeing the young players come in and make their debuts in Europe.

“I know it wasn’t planned, but it was amazing the job some of those guys did.”