For the first two months of this season, you'd have forgiven Alex Wootton for wondering if the Connacht fans had forgotten about him.
After an 11-try debut season in green last term, there was huge hope that the former Ireland U20 wing would kick on even further as he settled into his west of Ireland surroundings.
But a calf injury and the Autumn break delayed his seasonal reappearance until the end of November, by which point Mack Hansen was the talk of the town. In a few short weeks we went from wondering how Connacht would cope without Wootton, to wondering how he'd get back in the team.
Connacht are striving for squad depth, and a look across their back three options shows an area of real strength.
Wootton, Hansen and John Porch have all impressed when given opportunities on the wing this season, while Oran McNulty and Diarmuid Kilgallen have been seamlessly blended into senior rugby along with veteran Tiernan O'Halloran at full-back.
Injuries have ensured that Wootton, Hansen and Porch have all featured while one of the trio has been unavailable so far this season. Hansen and Porch got the bulk of the minutes when Wootton was out at the start of the campaign. By the time he was back it was Porch who was recovering from minor surgery, and when Porch returned, he took the place of Hansen who has missed the last two games with a calf problem.
But with Hansen set to return and Wootton and Porch both fighting fit, Andy Friend has a decision to make. Don't rule out the possibility of one of the trio wearing 15.
Wootton has started the last four games and will be hoping to make that five in a row when Connacht host his former club Munster this Saturday in the United Rugby Championship.
And while he's looked steady since his return to the side in November, he still feels he's getting to grips with Connacht's newer, faster style of play.
"Last season was great and a lot has changed since then. I've moved up here and pre-season was fairly tricky with a niggle in my calf and then competition for the back three has really stepped up this season," he said.
"On myself, I'm finding it tough to hit my straps or get back to where I was this season maybe with some of the new stuff that has been put in, trying to get to grips with that.
"I'm doing all I can to get back up there. With a good pre-season, you can get back up there fairly easily but that was tricky. So just putting in the effort now to get back there."
Saturday's meeting with Munster will be Wootton's fourth against his former province since he made the short trip up the M18 - initially on loan - in the summer of 2020.
It was a move he sought to rediscover his career, after injuries saw him fall down the depth chart at Thomond Park.
His Munster career had been trending upwards initially, with the England-born but Irish-qualified wing joining from Northampton's academy in 2013, making his debut three years later and all the while gaining experience with Garryowen in the All-Ireland League.
By 2018, he'd been preferred over Simon Zebo as the starting winger for a Heineken Champions Cup semi-final against Racing 92 in the south of France, before injuries derailed his progress and his face struggled to fit.
But Connacht have a track record for picking out diamonds, and in Wootton they would have seen a 26-year-old winger who played 39 times for Munster and averaged a try every three matches.
On top of that, he was hungry.
"It was a fairly easy decision, to be honest (to move to Connacht).
"It was having a conversation with the coaches up here and having the opportunity to play more rugby really.
"I was away from family and friends for eight years but that last part of the eight years, I wasn't playing much rugby. If I'm away from family and I've moved over to a country to play rugby and I'm not playing rugby, well then I'm losing out really.
"I had an opportunity to come up here and potentially play more rugby, so it was an easy decision. I put my best foot forward last season and it was pretty good, I'm still trying to find my feet this season but all going well, putting the effort in, it will happen again.
"Looking back, it has been the right thing but it was always going to be good because I had the right intentions.
"I was actually speaking to a friend the other day who owns a coffee shop and I was saying to him, 'If your job was solely to be a barista and pour coffees and you broke your hand and couldn't make any coffees, well you can't do your job.'
"That's kinda how it is through injury and whatever, when you're not getting selected you unfortunately have this negative mindset, or it can definitely creep in, a negative mindset of 'I'm here, trying my best, and it's just not happening for whatever reason.'"
His three previous games against Munster have seen two defeats and one win, that win in May 2020 being his most recent outing against his former side.
"I try to stay away from the emotional side. There's no trying to prove a point because I know what I'm capable of and I'm sure Munster fans know as well from the years I've been down there."
He's yet to score a try against them, although he did impress in the 24-20 Connacht win at Thomond Park in the Rainbow Cup (below).
There's no extra motivation to prove a point against his former team-mates and coaches though. For Wootton, he wants to remove the emotion rather than harness it.
"I can only speak for myself, I don't know about the other lads who came up here but that doesn't cross my mind to be honest (proving a point).
"The only thing I think about when I play Munster is just to not be emotional because those things can come into play and I'm quite a factual person - I know what I need to do when I go onto the field.
"Therefore, if I know what I need to do and emotion comes into play, that can take you off task.
"So from my point of view, that's how I deal with rugby in general really.
"I try to stay away from the emotional side. There's no trying to prove a point because I know what I'm capable of and I'm sure Munster fans know as well from the years I've been down there.
"It's a different set of circumstances why I ended up here," he added.
While Connacht have earned huge plaudits for their commitment to attractive rugby this season, they're still ironing out the creases of inconsistency, and learning some hard lessons along the way.
In the reverse fixture against Munster in October they were the better side for most of the match, before giving up a late Diarmuid Barron try which saw Munster eek out the win. Against Leinster at the RDS they switched off either side of the half-time break, and saw the game out of reach in an instant, while against the Leicester Tigers in the Heineken Champions Cup, they fell victim to the power of the Tigers' bench.
"It's a game of rugby so there's always going to be purple patches but I think from our point, looking back on the Leinster and Leicester Tigers games, there's small things that really swing momentum," Wootton admitted.
"Momentum in those sort of Test match games is huge, whether it be something like backfield coverage not being right and we get stuck behind our gainline under the pump. Or being stuck in your corner or on the tryline for 10 or 15 minutes, those things really take a toll.
"We're starting to learn to accept those things and stick to our, let's say, defence if we're under the pump. We need to iron out those small things and we're still gaining experience.
"Looking back to last year, our squad is a lot more experience. Racing away last year, Europe last year, then winning games away from home last year, we're gaining those experiences within the squad and I think we're still doing that, especially early on this season.
"Hopefully these games and experiences do come into fruition in the last stage of this season or potentially next season."
Follow Connacht v Munster (Saturday 5.15pm) via our live blog on rte.ie/sport or on the RTÉ News App or listen to live radio coverage on RTÉ Radio 1.
