It went under the radar that Munster captain Tadhg Beirne had surgery on a persistent elbow issue after this summer's British and Irish Lions.
But it’s a small piece of detail that puts his performance in his side's 31-14 win against Leinster on Saturday into context.
While Leinster had 11 of their 2025 Lions contingent out on the pitch on Saturday – five of whom were playing for the first time this season – Beirne's all-action display at Croke Park countered the idea that the returning frontliners need time in the saddle to get up to speed.
The 33-year-old logged 14 tackles and is credited with four clean turnovers, three of which came in the crucial third quarter, while he was central to a Munster maul defence that stopped Leinster’s set-piece on multiple occasions.
Beirne’s influence didn't go unnoticed by Leo Cullen (below), who admitted his disappointment that Munster’s sole 2025 Lion looked much sharper than his own players.
The Leinster head coach was magnanimous in his praise for the Munster performance after Clayton McMillan’s side handed him a third defeat from four games to start the season.
And Cullen has laid down a public challenge to his squad: make sure that doesn't happen again.
"It's going to sting the lads, but it's good that it does sting them," the Leinster head coach said.
"They need to show what they're about now in terms of the response. So listen, it's an exciting challenge for us.
"We’ve lost three league games. It's more than we lost in all the campaign last year, including the knockouts.
"So yeah, we've a hell of a lot of work to do. That's the mindset we just need to adopt, because what happened has happened. It's the next thing, and the group needs to know what they're made of."
Munster’s first win against Leinster in five attempts came against the backdrop of an Ireland squad for the Autumn Nations Series that contained 21 Leinster players compared to Munster’s four.
In a further twist, two of Munster’s star performers on the day – Tom Farrell and Gavin Coombes – failed to make the 37-man Irish squad, and Cullen says he can relate to the "chip on the shoulder" that they brought to the game.
"If you're some of those Munster fellas... Listen, I know what it's like, missing out on national squads and having a bit of a chip on the shoulder, which you saw with a lot of Munster guys today.
"It was good for our guys to see that. Not that they should have been surprised by it. They know it's coming, but isn't it still all those individual battles out there?
"Munster won a lot of individual battles, and you’ve got to give them credit for it. So they're the victors today, they're the ones who take the credit.
"And we just have to take the criticism, because that's the way professional sports top end works. I'll take the criticism, but it's a collective piece, isn't it? We all need to own it together."
With just six points to their name from a possible 20, Saturday’s defeat leaves Leinster way back in sixth place in the URC after four rounds, and with very little wiggle room if they’re to secure their usual home advantage in the play-offs later this season.
And with 21 players leaving Leinster’s squad this week to head away on international duty, Cullen wants them to remember the pain of their Munster defeat when they return at the end of November.
"The first thing I'll be trying to get into is the top eight, with the way we're going to the moment. It’s not a home-run. We're miles away from that conversation at the moment. It's step by step.
"We'll have an idea when we come back together and say, 'right, do you remember what happened last time we were all together?’. So we need to be able to take our minds back to this moment and not just brush over it and learn from it.
"It just means there's no margin for error later in the year. But maybe it's not a bad thing, because it keeps everyone focused."
