It's only just over six years since the Scarlets were the kings of the United Rugby Championship.
And, like Munster last season, when they won the tournament, then the Pro12 in 2017, they did it the hard way.
Not enough to come to the RDS and beat Leinster in the semi-final, they managed it playing with 14 men for most of the game and were full value for a 27-15 win.
Wayne Pivac’s men came back to Dublin the following week to hand Munster a record defeat in the final.
A year later the Scarlets were once again in the decider, with Tadhg Beirne at number 8, but were blown away by a vengeful Leinster outfit at the Aviva Stadium.
But two finals in two years for a Welsh region was never really a massive overachievement.
The national team won three Six Nations titles between 2012 and 2019 and were a score away from reaching a World Cup final.
While the URC has undergone numerous format changes, the Scarlets have not managed to make the play-offs since losing that final in 2018.
Their overall finishing positions, after totting up the points in seasons with split conferences, have been eighth, fourth, fifth, seventh (Rainbow Cup), tenth and 14th last season.
Indeed, the most successful region, Ospreys, four-time winners between 2005 and 2012, have not featured in post-season games since 2017.
Ahead of this evening's clash at the RDS, Dwayne Peel’s charges sit 14th with one win from four to their name.
Their record against Leo Cullen’s side since that famous win in 2017 is played nine, won one, drawn one and lost seven, including a Champions Cup semi-final in 2018.
Last season’s table saw the Welsh regions, with the exception of Cardiff in tenth, occupy three of the four bottom places in the table, with only the winless Zebre propping them up.
This season the four Welsh teams have won just four games from 17, with Ospreys claiming two of those and Cardiff and Scarlets one each. Last weekend Leinster beat Dragons 33-10 in Newport (above), while the three other teams also lost.
"I think it’s going to be a very long season for the Welsh clubs in the URC," former Ireland captain Donal Lenihan told RTÉ’s Against the Head on Monday. "Europe? God only knows what might happen."
While the IRFU and the four provinces operate in lockstep, there’s no sign of any such unity across the water.
Indeed, the Welsh Rugby Union came in for heavy criticism for scheduling a match against the Barbarians on the same day as the Scarlets played Ospreys, which drew a crowd of 6,325 at the start of the month, in the BKT URC.
There were 53,000 at the Principality Stadium (below) to see off Leigh Halfpenny and Alun-Wyn Jones, lining out for the Baa-Baas alongside Justin Tipuric, more than enough star power to take bodies away from the derby.
In total there were 22 players from the four regions in action for Wales.
Interim WRU chief Nigel Walker admitted that the scheduling was a mistake but the action spoke louder than the words.
This controversy came just eight months after Wales' Six Nations squad threatened to go on strike amid a row over contracts, while only this week an independent review of the union revealed a "toxic" culture within the organisation. Reforms are on the way, they say.
When Warren Gatland returned to take over the national team last December he said he hadn’t realised the depth of the issues in Wales and if he had known he may not have made the decision to come back.
Former Llanelli, Scarlets and Wales hooker Robin McBryde, assistant coach at Leinster since 2019, was asked about his take on the decline in domestic Welsh rugby this week.
"It’s been well documented, the situation with the finances etc. but there are a lot of good people still working in the game in Wales," the 53-year-old (below) told RTÉ Sport.
"There are a lot of good players still involved as well so hopefully they’ll turn the corner and a little bit further down the line when you see all the young players getting an opportunity now that it will pay dividends a little bit later but it’s going to take time.
"They went pretty well in the World Cup [losing a quarter-final to Argentina], from a national team point of view, hopefully we’ll get that domestic side of the game a little bit better.
"The Welsh Rugby Union have put their hand up there and owned up to the fact that they got it wrong [about the Barbarians fixture]. Mistakes will happen.
"If you look at the four games at the weekend, the other three games could have gone either way.
"The regions were ahead until very late in those games and just let it slip at the last minute.
"They are not that far away.
"Some of these players are getting first-time exposure at this level so it’s going to take time to find their feet. Hopefully they can do that sooner rather than later."
It’s an optimistic take from McBryde and the URC, in competition with the Champions Cup, Premiership and Top14, and with the infusion of the South African franchises, needs some of the Welsh regions to start punching their traditional weight.
Morale has to be low and Scarlets have won just one away URC match since April 2022, that victory coming against Cardiff in January.
With Leinster welcoming back more of Ireland's World Cup squad for this game, the chances of Scarlets starting the fight back here, with what would be a first win against an Irish side in nine attempts, look slim.
Listen to the RTÉ Rugby podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Watch Sharks v Connacht in the URC from 2.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player
