It was very much a case of 'next man up' for Ireland this week, and that was absolutely fine with Irish boss Andy Farrell after his team's opening Six Nations win in Wales, achieved without a few regular faces.
The hosts' match-day squad could count on no fewer than 99 more caps than Ireland's. But the visiting bench boasted a wealth of experience - something which Farrell needed to call on earlier than anticipated when Conor Murray was drafted in to replace the named-to-start Jamison Gibson-Park at scrum-half before kick-off.
"If you said to us before the start of the game we'd get a bonus point win and play pretty well first up knowing what was going to be coming at us emotionally, I thought we handed the day pretty well," Farrell said afterward.
"There was no panic. We lost a couple of players during the week through injury. We'd four or five players who have not played any rugby whatsoever for quite some time and two more dropped out this morning, but the squad never missed a beat.
"That's because of the prep, the hard work that we put in not just as a squad but as management etc and it stands to you when you work hard. Our prep was really good over the past 12 days. Hopefully we can dust ourselves off, recover pretty well and bounce into next week."
Ireland went over for four tries to secure the welcome bonus-point win, with Caelan Doris getting them off to the perfect start in just the second minute. The Boys in Green then weathered something of a second-half resurgence as Wales went about trimming a sizeable half-time deficit.
"Wales were good, they were powerful, determined, they looked strong," Farrell said. "We were able to stay on point ourselves and be pretty ruthless when we got down the other end of the field, which was pretty pleasing.
"Obviously, riding the storm of that 20 minute period, we came through well, we showed resilience there.
"We finished pretty strong, kept playing to the end and had a few chances where we didn't quite get what we deserved. All in all, a good day at the office and a good start to the competition."
The shows rolls on, however, with the frantic nature of the competition meaning Ireland must do it all again next week against France at Lansdowne Road. Les Bleus, for their part, will have only six days recovery in between Sunday's opener in Italy and their trip to Dublin.
For Farrell, the readiness is all. "The work that we've put in so far will stand to us," he said. "We thought we'd have a decent performance coming in [today] because of the way we'd prepared. We'll have to do that again and build on it next week."
