As they prepare to head into the lion’s den against title holders Toulon on Sunday afternoon, Jonathan Sexton believes that Leinster need to attack the strengths of the Top 14 giants in their latest European Rugby Champions Cup fixture.

Speaking at the Leinster Schools Cup Draws in Dublin’s College Green last night (where his old alma mater – St Mary’s College – were paired with near rivals Terenure College in the first round of the Senior Cup), Sexton feels that tackling the Toulon breakdown could be the key to a successful performance in Mayol.

“It’s as much about stopping their strengths as exposing them. They’re very strong at a lot of things,” Sexton remarked.

“At the breakdown, they’ve got numerous guys like [Duane] Vermeulen, [Steffon] Armitage and in the backs [Mathieu] Bastareaud and even guys in the wide channels like [Bryan] Habana, who’s very good over the ball. That will be important for us and something we will put a lot of emphasis on.

“Wasps found a few [weaknesses]. They are beatable. They’ve been beaten lots of times. They are obviously an outstanding team and they’re not three times in-a-row European Cup champions for nothing. They’re outstanding. We’re going to have to be on top of our game to be in with a shout.”

Leinster currently find themselves in a precarious position in Pool 5, following their back-to-back defeats to Wasps and Bath. This doesn’t leave the Blues with much margin for error in the remaining pool games, but when he takes their recent Pro12 victory over Ulster into consideration, Sexton (who faced Toulon in the colours Racing Metro during the past two seasons) is confident that Leo Cullen’s side are making progress with each passing performance.

“We’re five games into the post-World Cup. That’s essentially the start of our season. We let ourselves down against Wasps in lots of areas. We were a hell of a lot better against Bath. We let ourselves down in one or two areas and that cost us the game.

“But in terms of turning up on the day, I think we did that. Against Ulster, we were probably better again. Hopefully, we’re still building. Look, sometimes when you have a bad run of performances or results you can get big news out of anything, but if we start taking our chances everything will be fine.

“There were a few against Wasps in the first half and it was the same story against Ulster. We created I thought quite a lot, where we’ve five on threes, five-metre scrums and five-metre lineouts. Leinster teams of old, we would have finished them. One try or two tries early in the game just changes the complexion of the game because the other team has to chase. There are lots of different things to take into consideration, but I’m hoping we’re still building and we’re going to see a better performance.”

Sexton is familiar with the pressure that comes with big European games, and he played a vital role in Leinster’s Heineken Cup semi-final triumph away to Clermont Auvergne in 2012. He agrees that this game could be used as a point of reference for the squad, and that they can also take heart from some of their recent wins against top-ranked opposition at international level.

“I haven’t really thought about it, that game [Clermont], until you just said it, but I think it can be maybe a point of reference for us to go to, and show that we have been here before and got results.

That’s what we have to go and get at the weekend. We have to look at how we’re going to get that result, and we’ve just got to concentrate on our performance.

“We’ve got a lot of internationals that have played against these guys in their different countries. They all come together in Toulon. Are they stronger than anyone of those other nations? I’m not sure.

“We can take great confidence that the guts of this Leinster team have beaten South Africa, have beaten Australia, have come close to beating the All Blacks. I suppose we can take confidence from that, that we have made up a large part of the Irish team over the last few years,” Sexton added.