Just four years after suffering a potentially career-ending injury, Johnny Sexton stands on the verge of capping off a year of unprecedented team success with the ultimate individual accolade.
Tonight in Monte Carlo the out-half will learn if his performances in helping Leinster win the Pro14 and Champions Cup, Ireland win a Grand Slam Six Nations, a Test series in Australia and claim a first-ever victory at home over New Zealand, will be judged good enough to sway the World Rugby judging panel.
At the back end of 2014, the then-Racing 92 player was ordered to take a 12-week break from rugby. The reason: a series of head injuries, which under French rules meant a mandatory rest period.
Sexton said at the time: "It is most unfortunate and I feel bad for the club," he said, "but I'm still not feeling 100%, and with injuries like this it's not worth taking any risks."
He later said: "It was scary because I didn't think it was serious when I went to meet [the club doctor], but he was concerned about the number [of concussions] I had.
"I know any head injury is serious but I'm the only one that knows how I feel and I was confident that I was getting better."
Johnny Sexton had taken his fair share of knocks
We don't know how much long-term damage head injuries will have on rugby players.
But the harrowing tale told by Sexton's former Leinster team-mate Dominic Ryan about his battle to play on and save his career while suffering symptoms of concussion tells us one thing: nothing is certain.
Players – like Sexton – can recover fully from the injury, even if the stigma remains, or, as with Ryan, it becomes a matter far more serious than any game.
The valour of players like Sexton is both the glory and the curse of rugby.
That feeling a player gets when he nails a tackle and the subsequent respect it engenders from team-mates is a more potent drug than the high of touching down for a try or kicking a goal.
"Some of the best games I've felt I've had, people wouldn't have talked about," Sexton told RTÉ Sport as he picked up the 2018 Guinness Rugby Writers of Ireland Player of the Year award on Wednesday.
He's referring to the contests where he didn't grab the headlines with a late kick or a match-winning points-haul.
Times, like last Saturday, when he and Jacob Stockdale barged Ben Smith into touch.
Sexton celebrates as Ireland win a late lineout
His reaction – punching the air and giving it large to the crowd – reminiscent of the glee of a footballer completing the perfect hat-trick in a cup final.
You try to take those moments away from a rugby player and you depower them.
"The first thing I would say about Jonno is that he is as tough as old boots and he would not ask anyone to do anything that he wouldn't do himself," says Richie Hughes, Sexton's coach from Under-13s at St Mary's College.
It's no coincidence that for all the big moments Ireland and Leinster have had this year, Sexton has been in place – the most notable being the late winning kick in Paris but he also steered his sides through the championship moments, when the games were in the mix, not necessarily there at the final whistle, but withdrawn – usually reluctantly as was the case against the All Blacks – only when the war had been won.
Has Sexton continued to play in the same abrasive manner that he always has?
Sexton celebrates as Leinster win their fourth European crown
The same manner that – for one reason or another – saw him fail to finish 19 of 22 Tests played before mid-February 2016.
A host of former top players joined the debate and the likes of Keith Wood, Brian O'Driscoll and Shane Horgan called for him to adapt his game, his approach to the tackle.
Speaking in May, Sexton, now 33, admitted that his desire to keep playing has piqued his interest in the career path of 41-year-old Tom Brady of the New England Patriots.
Sexton, six-times capped by the Lions, told RTÉ: "Stuart Lancaster [Leinster coach] has got me obsessed with Tom Brady, the most successful quarterback in the history of the NFL.
"Stuart has got me convinced that I'm going to play until I'm 40. My wife's gone mad. I'm reading up on him and trying to figure out how I can prolong my career for as long as possible."
Richie Murphy, the Irish skills coach, reckons that it is his fitness, and not a change of approach that allowed him to reign supreme in 2018.
"He's still doing all that hard work, so, I don't see that as being a massive change in how he has approached the games," Murphy told RTÉ Sport.
"He's still the guy getting off the line making the tackles. I remember last season in the Six Nations him having a pick-and-go near the line, so that's not a guy who is trying to look after himself.
"I don't think he's ever played the game like that and I don't think that will actually happen. I think his ability to stay on the pitch is probably [down to that] his fitness levels are a little bit higher than what they were 12 months, 18 months ago."
Sexton's display of resilience and determination on the way on to the shortlist is not something that surprises Hughes, the coach who took a young Sexton under his wing at St Mary's.
"He was a brilliant guy to work with because of his focus and attention to detail," Hughes told RTÉ Sport.
"Even as a young lad, he was great fun, he enjoyed a joke and a laugh, great banter with the lads, but once he got on the training pitch he was 100% focused.
"When he was in France he had to stand down and as far as he's concerned the medics put it to bed and all medical science said he was okay. But he had to deal with that and that doesn't surprise me either that [he came back from that episode] because he was very focused.
"That kind of thing would be an irritant but he wouldn't let it knock him out of his stride.
"He'd be focused on where he is at the moment and where he is at the moment is a good place, to put it mildly."
Sexton's search for perfection has seen him take on the role of on-field prefect. It's not, however, something that developed as he became one of the senior players. It was there from the start of his Leinster career in 2006.
"He always had a curious rugby brain and wanted to learn from anyone he could," recalls Leinster team-mate Bernard Jackman, who was there for the Dubliner's early days.
"He was passionate about Leinster and it was clear he cared deeply. Even at a young age he would drive standards and always wanted things to be perfect."
Sexton kicked 11 points in a 16-9 win over New Zealand
The World Rugby judging panel is made up of Maggie Alphonsi and Clive Woodward from England, Fabien Galthie of France, Australia's George Gregan and New Zealand's Richie McCaw, Gus Pichot from Argentina, South Africa's John Smit and O'Driscoll.
"I'm one of eight judges so he's an eighth of the way there, isn't he?" said the former Ireland captain, himself overlooked in 2009 when McCaw got the nod.
Also in the running are Faf de Klerk and Malcolm Marx of South Africa, Rieko Ioane and back-to-back winner Beauden Barrett. It's an impressive list.
While club games are not supposed to be taken into consideration for the vote, his record with the Blues - only one loss, to Toulouse last month - has been exceptional.
The climax in Bilbao was not just the fruit of one season of work. When he returned from France after two seasons he said that there were "things wrong with the environment that need a long time to fix." The following season they lost out narrowly in a European semi-final, the next year, they won it. The three-time Heineken Cup winner had no intentions of sitting on those laurels.
"Do I think Johnny's been one of the most consistent and best players in the world this year? I do but I think we can get forgotten about sometimes by our southern hemisphere counterparts," O'Driscoll told RTÉ Sport.
"We'll have to wait and see whether Maggie Alphonsi, Clive Woodward and Fabien Galthie think there is enough weight in the European Cup and the Six Nations, Pro14 and that dropgoal in France. Johnny doesn't play bad games. His seven out of 10 is a poor game so he would be a worthy winner."
One can imagine that the South African and New Zealanders – winners for the last six years straight – are fighting their own corners too.
Since its inception in 2001 only Keith Wood, in the inaugural event, from these shores has been crowned as World Rugby's Player of the Year.
There's a public vote, while media and international captains and coaches also get a say but the panel's say is "significant".
Within Ireland many find it hard to believe that anyone has had a better season than Sexton.
It could be both biased and completely true.
Apart from the 1 v 2 element of Ireland's game against New Zealand it was also billed as a battle for the World Rugby award. Sexton, the contender, against the reigning champion, Barrett.
If it was a battle, the Irishman won: Ireland claimed a famous victory, he scored more, passed more, but more importantly from his point of view, made more tackles and missed fewer than the Hurricanes player.
Award or not, Sexton has overcome a lot of adversary to get within sight of the summit.
"Sometimes I think out-halves shouldn't win individual awards because you are just meant to make things tick unless you are someone like Beauden Barrett who scores four tries in a game," said Sexton recently.
"It's nice to be nominated and win these awards but it's opinion and not everyone's going to agree with it."
Few will disagree if Sexton swings the vote tonight.
Watch the World Rugby Awards on the RTÉ Sport website this evening from 7.30pm or follow the evening's events via our live blog.
