After two weeks cutting a frustrated figure as Ireland went through the motions, Andy Farrell couldn't hide his delight at the ruthless nature of the 46-19 win against Australia on Saturday.
But the message is clear. If Ireland are to finish their Quilter Nations Series with a win against South Africa next week, even better is required.
The Ireland coach had been critical of his side after the recent games against New Zealand and Japan. Even after last week’s 41-10 win against the latter of those sides, his criticism was pointed.
Among plenty of soundbites, he had declared he wanted to see his team "having a bit of bite".
The 27-point win, Ireland’s largest ever against the Wallabies, speaks for itself, and it stands up well when you look under the bonnet.
We won’t declare the lineout issues to be fixed just yet, but a 100% return on 10 throws has come at just the right time. The scrum was also perfect on the night, winning a couple of second half penalties for good measure.
The attack was crisp and clean. With 3.8 points per entry to the 22, Ireland averaged a score every time they got into opposition territory.
But the energy and effort were the drivers behind all of those things coming together.
One of Farrell’s other criticisms after the Japan game was that his side were "feeling sorry for ourselves", but they shook off that funk in the last week.
It was most notable around Ireland’s kicking game, where Mack Hansen, Tommy O’Brien and James Lowe worked tirelessly to chase after Sam Prendergast and Jamison Gibson-Park's contestable kicks. Even when they didn’t win the contest cleanly, Irish jerseys were consistently first to the scraps on the ground, launching on the breaking ball like seagulls on a chip.
"I thought we really let ourselves go and attacked the game straight from the word go," Farrell said on Saturday night.
"It's always something that we're.... we talk about ourselves, you know? Again, you grow belief by how your prepare. Sometimes you prepare really well and it doesn't transfer.
"We had an unbelievable warm-up out there today and I was going, 'Wow, if Carlsberg could do warm-ups, that would be it’. But that doesn't transfer sometimes. I've seen unbelievably rubbish warm-ups and seen teams play well.
"So, it's nice that we prepare well and we've got a performance on the back of it.
"With our consistency of preparation, there has to be belief and confidence that goes with that. But it obviously helps to back it up."
That performance couldn't have come at a better time, with this week’s visitors South Africa coming to Dublin in electric form, and with a score to settle.
The two-in-a-row world champions have followed their recent Rugby Championship title with three impressive wins over Japan, France and Italy, playing large chunks of their French and Italian wins with 14 players after straight red cards for Lood de Jager and Franco Mostert.
The arrival of the South African franchises to the United Rugby Championship has also ramped up the rivalry between the national sides, while the presence of Jerry Flannery and Felix Jones on former Munster coach Rassie Erasmus’ coaching ticket adds another layer.
"It's great. I mean it's a fantastic place to be, isn't it?" Farrell added, as he looked ahead to Saturday’s visit of the Springboks.
Ireland have had the edge when these sides have met in recent years, winning four of the last five meetings of the sides, with the only South African win in this fixture since 2016 coming in the first Test of their 2024 series in Pretoria.
However, the two World Cups won by the Springboks during that time are the bigger prize, and Farrell insists there is no doubt they are "the best in the world".
"What a fantastic opportunity to test yourself. You always want to play against New Zealand. You always want to test yourself against the best.
"Certainly in this moment in time, South Africa are definitely the best and we relish that sort of opportunity to see where we're at.
"Everyone's talking about them and the type of rugby that they're playing. A rich vein of form and rightly so. They've played some brilliant stuff.
"I think it's their energy and enthusiasm, which is probably driven from a couple of points of difference, one being the defence as in linespeed, one being the breakdown and the other being the set piece. They get their energy from all of those bits because they do them really well.
"They know their own DNA but they're able to add a few tricks as well with the type of personnel they have in their armoury.
"I don't think it [a repeat of this performance] will necessarily be enough, but I like the way that we got out of the way of ourselves.
"Last week, we talked about how after a couple of errors we just went within ourselves a little bit and it didn't happen this week because there were plenty of mistakes, it's always going to happen in Test-match rugby anyway, nevermind with the conditions the way they were. I suppose that's the most pleasing part for me.
"We'll certainly enjoy this win but the lads will be back on task and they'll know what it means to everyone in Irish rugby as well, so we'll look forward to that."
