Given boardroom fondness for five-year plans, the men in charge of the Scarlets set with rebuilding the reputation of one of rugby’s great strongholds back in 2013 were surely unable to believe their luck when one of the most influential Scottish players of his generation unexpectedly came on to the market.

Already rewarded for having taken advantage of that by way of Scotland skipper John Barclay’s leadership of their side when, last year, the regional club claimed its first major silverware for 13 years, they are in contention for two trophies this season and he believes that he is already guaranteed to go out on a high, since this semi-final meeting with Leinster in Dublin is of a different order compared with last year’s encounter in the PRO12.

“It’s comfortably the biggest isn’t it,” he said, when asked to rank the occasion in terms of the matches he has played in for the Scarlets. “The [PRO12] final was fantastic, but obviously the here and now is a semi-final which we haven’t been in for 11 years, so it’s right up there.”

Small as the Scarlets’ home town of Llanelli is, its status within the sport is such that there is a different level of expectation to anything he encountered playing in Scotland and Barclay consequently understands why locals are seeing their return to the top table – having played in three Heineken Cup semi-finals, but not reached that stage of Europe’s top competition for more than a decade – as historic in itself, noting that of the current squad, only club captain Ken Owens was involved last time around.

“It’s one of those things that will get brought up, but as a group we focus on the here and the now. Maybe Ken was part of that I think, but the guys are just excited about the occasion, about what we’ve achieved and trying to keep the journey going,” he said.

While last season’s two biggest wins were achieved against Leinster in the PRO12 semi-final in Dublin at their RDS home, then across the city in the Aviva Stadium against Munster, there is also an awareness that as they head back across the water to face Leinster at a packed national stadium this time around, they can expect the opposition to be even more fearsome since, in what has already been a glorious year for Irish rugby, a Leinster win would set up the possibility of a meeting with Munster in the final.

“We’re playing against the favourites probably for the whole competition who form pretty much the backbone of the Irish team,” Barclay observed.

“They’re favourites for a reason, off the back of a Grand Slam as well, so it’s going to be tough, it’s going to be a big challenge, but this group of players enjoys these occasions, like we showed last year when no-one was backing us in the semi-final. So, we’ll go over, the group’s relaxed, the group’s feeling confident but equally under no illusions about how big the challenge is.”

A reminder of that was presented on his last visit to the venue during the Six Nations Championship, but for all that Scotland were ultimately well beaten by their title-bound opponents, Barclay believes that his side are equipped to learn the very basic lessons provided on that occasion, not least because of those aforementioned similarities between Ireland and Leinster.

“Yeah, they’re pretty good at the breakdown aren’t they and Ireland were tough to get the ball off as well, so we’ll have to defend well but be smart as well and not give away too many penalties, because when they get down the far end if they’re holding the ball it’s going to lead to points,” he observed.

“It’s obviously two different teams and you learn that you’ve got to take your opportunities. That’s probably the lesson to learn. We [Scotland] created a lot in that game, arguably left four walk-in tries out there which is pretty uncommon in any game. But we’ve guys who finish off things very well here, guys like Gareth [Davies] and Aled [Davies] at 9 run great support lines and generally we’ve got guys who are very good in that area.”

With Barclay set to return to Scotland at the end of this season, albeit to join Edinburgh rather than Glasgow Warriors where he made his name in the professional game, his understanding of what it takes to win the domestic title and then drive on from there could prove invaluable and he believes the Scarlets are readier for a challenge of this size than they were when they won the PRO12 title.

“End of last year we were probably playing some of our best attacking rugby. Certainly those last few weeks of the season, the Connacht game, Ospreys game, we were running in tries for fun it seemed. I think we’ve developed and teams are obviously a lot more wary of us now, so the challenge each week is harder, but I think we’ve developed in the way we’ve found ways to win tricky games and managed to score a lot of tries out of nothing really and our defence on the whole has been very good. Just a year older, bit wiser, bit more maturity and a couple of other guys have come into the team and added a lot as well,” he observed.

“We’re away from home in Europe, so we’re going to have to defend very well. They’ve got a lot of bonus points for four tries in the league haven’t they, so their attacking prowess is pretty impressive, but defensively we’ve been good all year.  We defend well as a unit, we’ve got a great culture that wants to work hard and we’ve got a lot of guys who are good over the ball as well.”

Whatever happens in Dublin there will still be plenty for Barclay and his colleagues to look forward to in his last few weeks with them, their victory over PRO14 pace-setting Glasgow Warriors a couple of weeks ago having served notice that having been the last winners of the PRO12 title, they aim to be the first to claim the domestic title in the competition’s latest format.

“It’s not really so much about me, but to win something like that in whatever sort of form would be awesome,” he said.  “I’ve loved my time down here. It’s great that in my last season we’re playing big matches. Every week’s a big match now for six weeks really, so I’m just excited to be part of that and hopefully we’ve got five/six more weekends of rugby to come.”

Then comes the task of heading home and involvement in another project with a rugby team that has under-performed for too long. 

Arriving as he will at the end of Richard Cockerill’s first season in charge, Edinburgh’s hope must be that the now 31-year-old Barclay can continue to bring his influence to bear until another five-year plan is completed.