My diet changed. Tuesday pints were no more. I fed my flywheel; provided continuous energy to the body. I got leaner to cover an extra kilometre in every game and improved my range of passing so my carry threat increased because the defence became unsure of what I would do.

Half the battle is to know the enemy. I became a student of the game, I began to understand the flow of the 80 minutes.

I told the media around this time that I didn’t like watching rugby. I was being flippant. People seemed to take offence. I wasn’t a fan of the game because I was living it. That’s what I meant.

I hated sitting in Leinster, in a hot room, trawling through reviews, so I bought the software to study matches at home. I’d have training put on my hard-drive. I’d pay the masseuse to come over out of my own pocket.

“Find out what works for you and invest.”

a��1000 here, a��500 there but I started seeing results. I started anticipating what an opponent was going to do because of the hours spent pouring over him on the iPad. Tom Brady says he could “watch film all day,” and that he finds it “soothing.” I know what he means. I maximised my value on the field so nobody could question my methods off it.

I invested 10 solid years honing my craft. The rewards came. The Grand Slam (all three Six Nations titles were special), four European medals, two Lions tours, three leagues and some cool individual nominations.

Great memories mixed with awful defeats. Done by all the space we gave up on the edge against the All Blacks in 2013 and Argentina in 2015. I don’t care how many players we lost to injury at the last World Cup and SeA?nie’s bullshit suspension, after how we finished against France, I felt like we were good to go. Dad’s mentality drilled to the surface – five injuries, so what? They are gone, who’s up next? Hendo, Mads, Jordi. Fine by me. Give me the game plan, right, let’s get to work. Follow me. But we got caught against Argentina. Training on a narrow pitch all week didn’t help. The up and out defensive system, pushing them to the side-line didn’t work. We clawed our way back into it. Mads missed a kick. They went the length and scored.

I wanted to keep the captaincy but Joe Schmidt disagreed. Joe knows me pretty well by now. When telling me Paul O’Connell would be captain he just ripped the plaster off – casually informed me walking out of the team room. I learned a hell of a lot as Paulie’s vice captain, he was a superb leader, gave it everything, and was playing serious rugby right up to the cruelest ending.

When Joe went with Rory Best before the 2016 Six Nations I was gutted. I needed to know if he saw me going to Japan in 2019. It became a contractual discussion as well. Why make me vice-captain then? I was unhappy. The decision, I told him, was going to impact on my thinking. The Ireland captaincy felt like the natural next step in my career.

In the end, playing for Ireland mattered more than being passed over. I wanted to beat the All Blacks, I wanted to win another Slam, I wanted to tour New Zealand with the Lions…