The 28-year-old flanker produced a masterful performance in the Irish province’s 89-7 thrashing of Montpellier Hérault Rugby in the Heineken Champions Cup on Sunday, scoring two tries.

“I’m really enjoying it, really enjoying it, it’s great playing with this group – and it’s easy when we’re getting cheered on like that today,” said the Heineken Star of the Match. “Very pleased with that and especially the team performance.”

There was no evidence of rustiness from Leinster in the Round 3 encounter as they put themselves in with a great chance of qualifying for the knockout stage of the competition with a huge win.

“It was great to get back out here in front of the support,” added van der Flier.” It’s been a long time since we played, a lot of training, so I think everyone's very keen to get back on the pitch and you can see how much we enjoyed that and how keen everyone was to get going.”

Head coach Leo Cullen felt much the same, saying: “We’ve been waiting for this game for a while now. I think the guys applied themselves well over the last number of weeks, training-wise.

"It has been a frustrating period for all, but for us it was just about trying to control what we can.

“We know we’re sort of chasing the pool to a certain degree, so every point is so important for us now.

“We talked about the fact that we can’t afford any slip-ups going into the game and trying to maximise every single point from the game. I thought our guys did a pretty good job overall.”

Josh van der Flier is thrilled to be playing again after postponements saw him and his Leinster Rugby teammates out of action since the start of December.