With dust finally settled on France's Grand Slam-busting defeat of Ireland in Dublin on Saturday, Jamison Gibson-Park and Josh van der Flier both stressed the importance of ending the Six Nations on a high against Italy this Saturday in Rome.
Ireland can still win the championship if France slip up against Scotland in Paris, though that feels highly unlikely.
Aside from anything else, there's pride to play for, and the chance for Ireland to send three great servants - Peter O'Mahony, Cian Healy and Conor Murray - into the sun on a high.
"It would be nice to finish off in a good way for the lads that are done," said Gibson-Park.
"Obviously it was their last game in the Aviva, but we have another game to look forward to, so that's the beauty about this competition, we still have a game to go and we can turn around hopefully, so I look forward to that.
"There's plenty to process, but I think for now we're going to try to do our best to celebrate the lads because they've been unbelievable servants to Irish rugby."
Gibson-Park had special praise for his fellow scrum-half Murray.
"I've been very privileged to play with him," he said of the Munster man. "He was one of the best in the world for the guts of 10 years. I used to watch on and when I first arrived in Ireland I was kind of amazed at how good he was really, he was unbelievably consistent and I suppose in many ways I felt at that time I was probably a little inconsistent.
"So I looked up to guys like him for sure, and then getting into camp with him, it's been awesome to rub shoulders with him.
"His kicking game, like you guys all know, over the years under Joe (Schmidt) and everything was unbelievable. He was streets ahead of anyone else in the world with that part of his game, and he still is, he's still unbelievable."
Van der Flier admitted the players are still trying to process what went wrong against the French. Numbed by the disappointment, the aim now is to get back to basics.
"We have to put in a performance to be proud of," he stressed.
"Obviously for the team, the pride of playing for the country, but also the opportunity of potentially winning the championship. It's probably out of our hands, but we'll definitely be focusing on that.
"Then on the emotional side of the week, there'll be a few lads finishing up, last Six Nations and everything, it'll be emotional in that way. No doubt lads will be as fired up as ever to get going for the game.
"I think one of the things I find that's really important is you have to get all the misery out of the way on Monday or Tuesday, get all the mistakes, looking over the mistakes (out of the way) so it's not hanging over you for the rest of the week.
"Rome is a pretty special place to play."
Watch Italy v Ireland in the Under-20 Six Nations on Friday from 7.35pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player
Watch Italy v Ireland in the Six Nations on Saturday from 1.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app. Listen to live commentary with Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
