Iain Henderson loves performing on the big occasion - and used the Nissan Stadium as his stage yesterday.
The new Ulster skipper impressed at the last World Cup and was a force of nature for Ireland in their four-try demolition of Scotland to open up their account in this one.
He set the tone for a dominant performance by charging through Scots forwards Grant Gilchrist and Stuart McInally to set up a try for his second row partner James Ryan.
"Well, for five minutes after it I wasn't feeling great," he grinned.
"It's good. When you get that, when you see someone else doing that it gives a massive lift, it gets me excited.
"There was unbelievable support in the clear out and then James Ryan with the try.
"Not that we planned that but during the week, there's a lot of emphasis on line-breaks and making sure we make the most of them."
Ireland did that, scoring three times from their first three visits into their rivals' 22.
"They started well and took their chance when they got into our 22," said bemused Scotland supremo Gregor Townsend.
"If you give them a 15 to 20 point start it's going to be very hard to come back.
"We didn't show the best version of ourselves - when you don't do that against the best teams in the world, they'll punish you."
When the World Cup squad was announced, the omission of Devin Toner was the main concern but, after this win, Ryan agreed that his second row partnership with Henderson could become a world-class one.
"Traditionally it’s been a real strength for us," he said.
"Obviously there was a couple of games in the summer when it didn’t go well for us and we weren’t where we needed to be.
"I think today was a good platform. The more time we spend together, hopefully the better it will get.”
Henderson felt the lineout went well, praising Rory Best, who played close to the 80 minutes, and adding: "We've had a really good two weeks training.
"Hats off to the guys who won't get the credit, Jean Kleyn, Rhys Ruddock, Tadhg Beirne. They did a great job on the training field.
"We can only prep as well as the guys that aren't playing train. Simon Easterby has done a good job for the past two weeks.
"We know we've been put under pressure with the pre-season, that the game against England didn't go well. We built into Wales and it went better".
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