Through the good days and the bad, the one consistency with Munster's journey to the BKT United Rugby Championship Grand Final is that it's never been boring.
Graham Rowntree's opening campaign as head coach, backed up by a new team of assistants in Mike Prendergast, Denis Leamy and Andi Kyriacou, has taken them to within one game silverware, something that seemed unlikely on several occasions during the season.
Their route to the URC final hasn't been a case of a slow start followed by a big finish. It's been a season that's seen them turn corners and hit cul de sacs, but ultimately they've arrived at the right destination.
Here are some of the highs and lows that have defined their run to the decider,
Munster 31-17 Bulls (15 October 2022, Thomond Park)
Round 5 against the Bulls was billed as 'win at all costs', and Graham Rowntree's side got that, and more, in their first Thomond Park outing of the season.
Having lost three of their first four games, and the only win being a dour 21-5 victory against Zebre in Cork, the honeymoon period was long over for Rowntree and his staff.
For the first time this season, we saw some green shoots in what this team were trying to do. The province had welcomed back their contingent of Emerging Ireland players after the tour of South Africa, all of whom brought a badly needed confidence to a squad that were lacking it.
Calvin Nash and Shane Daly impressed on the wings, even if Nash only got to play 40 minutes due to an injury. Thomas Ahern and Jack Crowley added punch off the bench, while Edwin Edobgo continued his impressive early-season rise.
Bit by bit you could see their attacking shape come together. The handling errors and loose passes that littered their opening four performances turned into linebreaks and pressure on the opposition, and the bonus-point win let some badly-needed steam out of the valve.
"It's important for us and the spectators to see the fruits of our labour," Rowntree said after the game.
"I could see what Mike [Prendergast] calls 'green shoots'. I could see it coming in our game so far, but we could see it all come through tonight."
The sparks of life in attack caught the eye, but it was their steeliness in defence that pleased Rowntree most on the night, with his side producing two huge defensive stands at the end of both halves, which ultimately prevented the South Africans from taking anything back home.
Munster ultimately finished two points ahead of the Bulls in regular season. Their bonus-point, and the Bulls lack of one, felt significant at the time, and it proved to be even more so by May.
Leinster 27-13 Munster (22 October 2022, Aviva Stadium)
One week on from a morale-boosting win against the Bulls, Munster were back on the wrong side of the result.
While they couldn't leave the Aviva Stadium with any points to show for their efforts, they did garner a lot of belief from their performance against a well-stacked Leinster, who included Johnny Sexton, Dan Sheehan, Caelan Doris, Garry Ringrose and Robbie Henshaw in their starting team.
Munster, meanwhile, were now deep into an unprecedented injury crisis, which would see them make three emergency signings over the next week, and the extent of that injury list was born out in the game; Jeremy Loughman swapping back and forth between loosehead and tighthead, replacement hooker Scott Buckely having to play the final stages of the game in the back row, while Ruadhan Quinn played off the bench just five days after turning 19.
With 45 minutes played, a Liam Coombes try catapulted them into an unlikely 13-6 lead early in the second half.
Given the gulf between the respective matchday squads it was no surprise to see Leinster eventually pull away for a 14-point win, but with the final try coming three minutes from time, the scoreline wasn't a true reflection of the 80 minutes.
"I'm proud of the lads. I just told them there, I'm proud of them," Rowntree said after the game.
"There's a sombre mood in there, some young men who wanted to do better. I thought they deserved better than the scoreline.
"But I'm proud of them. I asked them to fight, keep fighting, get off the floor, keep fighting. I asked them to be brave and they did that."
It left them with a record of two wins from six games, and a shell of a squad, and while they would go on to suffer another loss a week later against Ulster, it felt like they were up for the fight.
Munster 28-14 South Africa Select XV (10 November 2022, Páirc Uí Chaoimh)
"It was definitely a turning point for us. That game gave us a lot of belief."
Roman Salanoa isn't the only Munster player to cite November's win against a South Africa A team as the moment everything changed.
Everything went right at Páirc Uí Chaoimh, with 41,000 people packing out the home of Cork GAA to watch Munster put on a show. Even the brutal winter wind and rain ramped up drama.
While their injury crisis was starting to ease, it was negated by the Autumn Nations Series which saw a chunk of frontline players unavailable for the visit of a South African second-string that looked formidable on paper.
To quote Salanoa, it was an "all gas, no brakes" performance, starting with Shane Daly's try on two minutes, before another Cork native Simon Zebo (below) dived over later in the half to set them on their way.
Second row Kiran McDonald made himself a cult hero with a tireless performance on debut. He'd been drafted in on a short-term deal just a couple of weeks earlier when the injury list was at its worst, Rowntree admitting after this game that he had never heard of the Scottish lock, let alone seen him play, until a few weeks previous.
From a league table perspective, the result did nothing to change their position in the URC table, but it was significant in more important ways.
"We had a slow start to the season and we all knew we were going in the right direction. It was just that everything came out then at Páirc Uí Chaoimh, and from there we started building," Salanoa added.
They would go on to win seven of the next eight URC games. Their run was beginning to take shape.
Ulster 14-15 Munster (1 January, Kingspan Stadium)
A game that summed up the season.
Having missed a golden opportunity to beat Leinster on St Stephen's Day, Munster travelled north to Belfast on New Year's Day with significant pressure on their shoulders, and with 10 minutes to play it looked like their season was starting to unravel.
Robert Baloucone's try on 67 minutes left them trailing Ulster 14-5, with little indication they would turn it around. Ulster, however, had been in a downward spiral since early December, and when replacement Ben Healy trimmed Munster's deficit to 14-8 after 72 minutes, it kicked Rowntree's side into life while also sewing doubt into the minds of the Ulster players.
On 75 minutes, a Jack Crowley break up the guts of the pitch put them into position to strike, and after pounding away at the Ulster line it was Ben Healy who forced his way over with eight seconds left on the clock.
From just to the left of the posts, Healy's conversion was the final act of the game which Munster had snatched at the death. His somewhat muted reaction to the huge win was put into context just a few days later when it was confirmed he would be leaving Munster at the end of the season to join Edinburgh.
He still had a chapter or two left to write in his Munster story.
Sharks 50-35 Munster (1 April 2023, Hollywoodbet Kings Park)
It was a 15-point defeat that flattered Munster, and a humiliation that had been coming for a few weeks.
To fully appreciate it, you have to go back to early March and the 49-42 win against the Scarlets in Cork. With 34 minutes played at Musgrave Park that night, Munster were 28-0 in front and cruising towards a seventh win from their last eight in the URC.
The province won that night, but the concession of 42 points against the Scarlets was the start of a three-game sequence in which their defence imploded, conceding 130 points across three games, seeing their hopes of a home quarter-final in the URC killed off, and culminating in a Champions Cup Round of 16 hammering in South Africa.
Their 50-35 scoreline against the Sharks was flattering to them. They trailed by just three, 17-14 at half-time, but by the hour mark the South Africans had moved 43-14 in front, with the final quarter of the game an exercise in damage limitation.
In a season of many highs and lows, this was the floor. It's hard to believe it was just eight weeks ago.
"I think we had a good hard look at ourselves after the European loss to the Sharks," Stephen Archer said in the week leading up to their semi-final win against Leinster.
They haven't been beaten since. Two weeks later they were back in South Africa to pull off an unlikely win against the Stormers, before returning to the scene of the Durban drubbing to pull off a second half comeback in a 22-22 draw with the Sharks which secured Champions Cup rugby and a fifth place finish in the league.
Further away wins against Glasgow and Leinster have continued their determined form, bringing them one step away from ending their 12-year wait for silverware.
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