By her own usual high standards, Aoife Wafer had a pretty quiet afternoon in Ireland's Guinness Women’s Six Nations opener against England at Twickenham.
On Thursday, after naming his team to face Italy at Dexcom Stadium, Scott Bemand didn’t seem too concerned about the number 8’s form.
"She’s human. She’s a great player. So driven," the Ireland head coach said, when he was asked about the 24-year-old.
By half-time in Galway on Saturday evening, it was clear that the Harlequins back row was back to her very, very best.
Everything Bemand said about her on Thursday had been correct, although he may have been underselling it when he described her as "human".
At times in the opening half against Italy at Dexcom Stadium, Wafer played like an overage kid in an Under-14s game, beating tackles before she even got the ball, such was the fear the Italians appeared to have for Ireland’s red scrum-cap.
She only played 54 minutes in Galway, but that’s because she only needed to play 54 minutes, packing quite a bit into her time on the pitch.
As well as scoring a maul try, her ball-carrying was a constant source of joy for the Irish attack, making 88 metres on the ground from just 13 carries, while she made a positive contribution to each of the eight Irish tries while she was on the pitch.
"It's something that I worked on during the week," Wafer said after the 57-20 against Italy.
"Myself, Scays [James Scaysbrook] and Steeno [Gareth Steenson] have worked quite hard on it during the week. And thankfully it came through today.
"Playing over in England, they know me quite well now at the minute. So it's obviously going to be a tough game to get into, especially when we don't have a lot of possession or there wasn't a lot of carries all over the park.
"Defensively, my game was quite strong [against England], and it was just that attack where I'm usually known for which was quite hard to get into."
If Ireland are to pull off a famous win away to France next Saturday, the back row will be integral to it.
As usual, she played a central role in the last meeting of France and Ireland at the Rugby World Cup (above).
Having missed the entirety of the pool campaign with a knee injury, Wafer returned for the World Cup quarter-final in Exeter and was the most dominant player on the pitch, making nine tackles and 26 carries, while also winning two jackal turnovers.
Her influence was further emphasised in the game’s major flashpoint where she was bitten in a ruck by Axelle Berthoumieu, and while it was missed by the officials at the time, it copped the France backrow a nine-game ban.
The biting incident aside, the manner of Ireland’s 18-13 defeat that day has set this weekend’s meeting to be a real grudge match, and from a narrative point of view it is the biggest game in this year’s championship.
"That game hurt, for me personally, it still hurts," Wafer added of the World Cup quarter-final.
"But that’s not the be-all and end-all of why we want to win that game as well. We've spoken a lot about breaking into that top two and beating tier one nations.
"Erin [King] has spoken about it all week. We spoke about it as a group all week, in terms of how we can't just keep talking, we have to actually do it.
"And I think that was a big thing going into this week as well; we can't just sit back and keep talking about doing X, Y and Z, we have to go out and action it. And we did today, and I'm sure we will again next week."
None of the current Irish team have experienced a win in France, with the last Irish victory in this fixture coming in 2017.
But that record appears to be irrelevant to Wafer (above) and her team-mates, who are heading to Clermont-Ferrand high on confidence.
"This group lacks no belief. We believe that we'll go over to France and we'll win," she said.
"So we just have to control what we control. Our training weeks are tough at the minute and everyone's exhausted come Wednesday when we finish up.
"There's no denying that the French crowd is built different. They're loud, they’ve brass bands probably in every corner. They're crazy. It's a completely different atmosphere than what you get in any other game.
"But they'll all want to be playing the brass band, playing trumpets and whatnot, and we'll just be wanting to quieten it.
"So when the trumpets stop playing, and we start getting our game on, that's when we know we're doing a good job."
Follow our live blog on France v Ireland in the Women's Six Nations on Saturday from 8.10pm on RTÉ.ie/sport and RTÉ News app and listen to Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
