It's the end of the season and nowhere near the end of the season.
Come 5pm today, or next Saturday evening, club duties will be all wrapped up, but for a sizeable 12 of the Leinster contingent, it will be another eight weeks before they can put their feet up.
That's the current tally of Lions-in-waiting that Leo Cullen has to deal with for, hopefully, the next seven days.
Today's squad for the semi-final of the BKT URC against Glasgow has eight, Andrew Porter, Dan Sheehan, Joe McCarthy, James Ryan, Jack Conan, Jamison Gibson-Park, James Lowe and Rónan Kelleher.
Staying on ice for the moment are Josh van der Flier (hamstring), Tadhg Furlong (calf), Hugo Keenan (calf) and Garry Ringrose (calf).
It’s a month since Andy Farrell named his squad and it would be impossible for any of the tourists to completely park the buzz that comes with the thoughts of representing the Lions; 10 of the 12 are first-time Lions, albeit Porter and Kelleher were part of the 2021 entourage without playing.
But the closing stages of the URC fall into that grey zone between the hurt and devastation of the Champions Cup semi-final and the prestige of the trip to Australia, and for others, Ireland's summer Tests against Georgia and Portugal.
Leaving the blowout against a quarter-hearted Zebre aside, the performances of the team in wins over Glasgow and Scarlets have been widely criticised; Leinster just don’t look themselves.
Balls are dropping, unnecessary passes are attempted, discipline is poor and the much-vaunted defence is being breached.
They might just be trying too hard but, as Cullen said last weekend, this shouldn’t be a "drudge".
He was asked if he felt the Lions factor wasn’t playing on the minds of his stars, some of whom are unlikely to tour again and 11 of whom already have URC medals, or iterations of, in their back pockets.
"It was addressed and we moved forward and everyone is focussed," the head coach told RTÉ Sport.
Did he feel it had to be?
"Well, I just think it is one of those things, there is all sorts of distractions, it is not specific to that, there is other things that are going on at the moment.
"There was an Irish squad picked the middle of this week as well.
"There is all those things there as well, but we just need to stay focussed on what we need to focus on.
"At this time of year it’s putting in a big performance for lots of reasons.
"Every player out there will have something else that will be motivating so we have been well supported over the year and we want to put in that performance in a home game.
"It will be the last game in the Aviva with Leinster regardless of what happens, so we will try and do everything we can to keep the season alive for another week."
After urging fans to get onboard, to get excited about knockout rugby and the prospect of a first trophy since 2021, Cullen (above) could have done without the weather gods going against him, too.
It’s set to be a wet day in Dublin and, as of early yesterday afternoon, ticket sales were closing in on 15,000.
The Wicklow man, in charge at the club since 2015, says he hopes the team are able to put in action the lessons learned from the scrappy 33-21 win over Scarlets, and more importantly, the 37-34 loss to Northampton.
The 47 year-old said: "There’s a little bit around the conditions as well.
"If you think there was a fair old downpour leading into the [Scarlets] game and even at half-time as well, and there’s rain due [today].
"You’ve got to be able to manage some of that at this time of year, because the games are different.
"It’s knockout games, particularly the way teams come and play against us. They’re not playing a huge amount of multi-phase rugby, strong kicking games.
"You have to be able to adapt on the day. But the conditions play a big part for sure. We didn’t have a dry day last week.
"You’d certainly hope [we’ve learned our lessons], particularly when you get burned by an occasion, for sure, because we’ve had positive play-off games where we’ve racked up big scores on dry days and conceded no points but it didn’t ultimately help.
"So, you’d prefer two 6-3 wins if it meant you were going to win semi-finals.
"There’s always a bit of learnings that go on there but none of us know exactly what way it will unfold.
"That’s the pressure of knockout games."
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