Brian O'Driscoll and Ronan O'Gara joined Joe Molloy on Off The Ball this week as the pair reflected on their rugby careers in tandem.
Inevitably the question of professional satisfaction arose - while both were undoubtedly high achievers, were there regrets?
The Leinster man started: "A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B."
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O'Driscoll remembers arriving into the squad at the birth of professionalism, where several squad members had been amateur players too - that transition, he thinks, is under-appreciated.
"The timing of us coming into the squad in the late 1990s the team and the mentality of the squad is other-worldly from where it is now.
"I think sometimes people lose sight of that. So, from where we went from the doldrums of the ’90s through to achieving a grand slam in 2009 and leaving one more behind us in 2007.
"You take huge satisfaction from that and how we turned it around."
Copped on a bit earlier
The personal regrets flow from O'Driscoll in such a way that it does not seem to be the maiden voyage of their consideration.
"That said, you look back at how you could have changed things, how you could have copped on a little bit earlier. How you think you could have been more professional.
"It was of a different time," he concludes.
Ultimately, O'Driscoll is happy that he did take the measures to become more professional.
"Things changed for me around '05/'06," says the ex-Lions captain.
"I feel we did well but we had more in us. I still look back with satisfaction at a reasonable outcome from 15 years."
World Cups
Ronan O'Gara's regrets are clear: "The big thing that gnaws at me is World Cups - that really dissatisfies me.
"In '03, if we had beaten Australia, we had Scotland in a quarter-final."
Unsurprisingly, the subject of 2007 stirs a sense of disappointment in both men.
ROG was happy with his own individual preparation. "In Spala, we were all in peak condition, after that I have question marks in my head."
O'Driscoll cuts O'Gara off: "I wasn’t in peak condition, I think I dropped the ball. I had a big period of being away from the game from the last Six Nations game," interjected the Leinster man.
"There was a huge focus on being enormous and, boy, did I get enormous. I came back from my summer holidays over 100kg. I think that was a real error on my behalf."
O'Driscoll continued, "I played scared in that World Cup, I played ok. I had a couple of individual moments and scored some big tries, but I look back with big regret."
Opportunity
Some of that regret is seen through 20:20 hindsight: "I didn’t get my act together earlier in the year and realise what an opportunity it was.
"We should have won the grand slam in 2007 and we definitely had the capabilities of getting to a semi-final that year.
"Individually, I got it wrong and, collectively, we got the build-up completely wrong.
"That huge focus of getting big and getting strong and being able to deal with the power of France and Argentina took over and it changed our psyche.
"We didn’t become rugby players we were weightlifters."
O'Gara obviously didn't become a weightlifter but knows collectively that World Cup was all wrong.
"I felt the body was right but we cared so much about the performance, week one we didn't perform so we tried harder."
Empty
The former Munster man believes the training during the week was far too intense in trying to get the performance nailed. They were emptying the collective tank.
"Come Saturday, we were empty on game day," says O'Gara.
O'Driscoll added that the team even left training without a clear understanding of what they were doing.
The pair refer to a basic strike move they were practicing defending. A simple 8-9-14 move off the back of the scrum.
The shadow team ran the move successfully in training, O'Driscoll reflected the thinking after the session.
"We left training not understanding what to do, we were like 'we’ll be fine,'" recalls the centre.
O'Gara looks back with similar regret, "How did we not resolve it there and then?" says O'Gara.
The move was run successfully by Argentina in that 2007 World Cup game. The rest of that campaign is history.
"The World Cups were the big, big disappointments from my point of view," concluded O'Gara, who was speaking for more than one of us.
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