Ross Molony says Leinster's bonus-point win over Connacht was a display of "character" following the team’s Champions Cup defeat last weekend.
Leo Cullen’s men, who will play their quarter-final at the Aviva Stadium next weekend, rounded off their BKT URC regular season with a 33-7 victory at the RDS.
The head coach rested most of the side that lost to Toulouse after extra time in London.
They move to the top of the table but can be overtaken by both Munster and Bulls if they win their games against Ulster and Sharks on Saturday.
"I’m really happy," said player of the match Molony, who will move to Bath at the end of the season.
"It was a big week for the club after the disappointment of last week and it showed today the character of the group to bounce back."
Along with Molony, Ed Byrne is set for a move to Cardiff, while Rhys Ruddock will retire when Leinster’s season comes to an end.
Molony (above) added: "It wasn’t just my last game at the RDS, you look at Rhys’ last game, Eddie’s last game, there’s a couple of lads who put in a serious shift over the week and the club made it special for us during the week and really delighted with how the day went."
The lock also paid tribute to the players who stepped up to the plate during the World Cup and Six Nations and left the team, temporarily at least, top of the table before the final games on Saturday.
"Obviously, it's such a great group of players that you have that amount of players that go to the international set-up and then there’s another group that step in," he told TG4.
"It’s important the likes of Rhys and Max Deegan are putting in shifts during those February / March months. I was delighted to see Rhys get such a big cheer when he was going off, yeah, it was brilliant."
Connacht, who needed a win to stay alive in the play-off race, head off on their summer holiday after their ninth loss of the season.
Boss Pete Wilkins (above) said: "It was disappointing and frustrating as well because I felt we would have had more opportunities if we'd done a couple of things better and the importance of winning your contacts in attack and defence, against a very good Leinster team, in a game where it's super important we get off to a good start so that we can start to build a score.
"We needed to get a win, preferably a bonus-point win. In that first half, Leinster dominated the contact area, from attack and defence.
"As a result of that we were chasing shadows for long periods. We dug ourselves in a hole, I thought that improved after half-time, after something of a rev up but that's too late, it's too late in most games if you are 21-0 down but particularly against a team of this calibre."
On his team's showing, which included tries from Jack Conan, Jimmy O'Brien (2), Ciarán Frawley and Dan Sheehan, Cullen (above) said: "The lads were good, I thought.
"Like, a very short week, we only really had one proper training session so cohesion was always going to be a bit of a challenge but overall started the game with good intent.
"It's a big thing, you see some of the guys that are moving on at the end of the season for lots of different reasons, and it means a hell of a lot to them.
"So a difficult week and the lads should be proud of themselves, how they've applied themselves and it's nice that they got a positive result as well.
"The performance was far from perfect, you go to 21-0 but it felt like it was 21-0 for a long, long time there.
"We failed to push on and failed to deliver on some of the basics that you need to do to pull away from any team really at this level.
"But overall, we talked about there being a mix of some guys who have been a bit unlucky with selection, some young guys coming into the team as well and some guys that were involved in the matchday 23 in the Champions Cup final as well, so it's trying to marry those three groups and overall we're pleased to get a win.
"It's five points and we'll see where we sit at this time tomorrow night."
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