Since Josh van der Flier first broke through the Leinster setup, he has always been regarded as one of the hardest workers, on and off the pitch.

The Wicklow native has never shied away from extra work, but looking back on it now, he reckons there were times when he might have pushed himself a bit too much.

At 28, Van der Flier is at that stage now where he understands his body better, which is perhaps why he has been able to make subtle tweaks in his game that have had a major impact.

The Leinster flanker does a lot of things well, but up until this season, he wouldn't ever have been considered a formidable ball carrier.

However, having addressed the issue, Van der Flier has hit new heights this year, as he has become much more effective with ball in hand.

“I suppose (throughout) my whole career, I’ve always been trying to tweak things, work my footwork a bit more, that kind of thing,” Van der Flier explained.

“There’s been a few things I’ve worked on but one of them is trying to get up as much speed as I can in the carries but also a read, there are times when you’re running into a bit of a wall where you need to get up as much speed and be as powerful as you can into the carry, it’s something I’ve been worked on.

“And then another thing I’ve been working on is keeping my legs under me, I look at look at lads like Caelan Doris, the way he breaks tackles, he keeps his legs pumping, definitely something I’ve been trying to work on is try and find ways of ball carrying that I can keep my legs under me.

“Because sometimes someone can take out your legs or tackle you low and just trying to work out ways that I can be effective that way and then try to be as explosive as I can I guess.

“It might just be something I am subconsciously doing or maybe I am just being a bit more aggressive than I was before and it just seems to be going well at the moment.”

Whatever he's doing is working and last week's display in the win over Japan was further evidence of his enhanced ability with ball in hand. He will hope to build on that again against the USA on Saturday.

“A few years ago I would have almost run myself into the ground a bit, maybe doing extras,” Van der Flier continued.

“That’s maybe exaggerating a little bit but I wouldn’t have been as smart about it I suppose, whereas at this stage in the season what I’ve tried to do in training, let’s say if we’re playing a game of tag rugby to warm up, that kind of thing, is taking all those opportunities to try and replicate something you’re trying to do.

“But mainly it’s been mentally, looking at different video clips of people ball-carrying and trying to do visualisation around my ball carrying. It’s something I do for my tackling as well and all areas of my game really; trying to rehearse it mentally. I find that quite effective.”