Luke McGrath hailed his fellow Dubs for their history-making five in a row achievement - after revealing that Ireland's World Cup hopefuls were sensibly tucked up in bed while the All-Ireland final drama played out.
Instead, the interested members of Joe Schmidt's World Cup squad watched the game this morning at their Chiba base.
"It's actually on in the team room right now, a lot of the lads had their phones off last night," grinned McGrath, speaking at a press conference at the team hotel earlier.
"There's a lot of people who don't know the result right now, so I'd keep that quiet! Our head physio, Colm Fuller, is from Kerry so I'm sure they'll know the result when they see him walking around.
"It's an unbelievable achievement from Dublin. To do five is very special."
A number of the Ireland players planned to hit Tokyo for the afternoon.
"People here are so friendly and it's a great place to visit, so it's important we have time to switch off," said the Leinster scrum-half.
"Lads will do that today and then back into training tomorrow."
McGrath was expected to lose out in one of the last selection calls for his World Cup squad that Schmidt had to make.
But it was Connacht's Kieran Marmion who got the bad news instead.
"It was a very difficult day of waiting to get that call," revealed McGrath.
"The feeling, since I started training in Old Belvo as an eight-year-old, to make a World Cup squad is a dream come true.
"To be here is very special, I'm honoured to represent my country and I just can't wait to get started."
Joey Carbery is earmarked to provide cover in an emergency, with only McGrath and Conor Murray picked as scrum-halves.
"It comes back to making the squad, with just two scrum-halves I feel extremely lucky to be here," stressed McGrath.
"I'm delighted. Joey has been in my ear a bit, his pass is looking pretty good at the moment.
"He's such a skilful player that I'm sure if he was called upon, he'd be able to do it. Himself and Jordan (Larmour) seem to pick up everything so quickly."
He believes that Ireland are ready for what's coming from Scotland - and the unpredictable Japanese weather.
"Heat would usually lead to a high tempo and that's what we're hoping for," McGrath said.
"Scotland will bring that high tempo, playing from everywhere and they love the quick throw-ins, the quick taps, so that's what we're expecting.
"With the humidity, the sweat does get on the ball and it's quite hard to handle at times. But we trained all summer trying to implement that humidity in training, wearing sweat vests in pre-season and things like that to help us with the variables.
"Hopefully, it will lead to a high-tempo game but it will be a bit different than what we're used to."
Meanwhile, Munster winger Andrew Conway explained that it already feels like home from home for the Ireland squad in Japan.
"It's early days, it feels like we've been here longer than we have," he said.
"We've been getting our body clocks around with the time different, going to training and the gym. We had a new experience with the caps ceremony and it was great.
"It's been a long time coming, a long three months of giving everything to get in the squad. Once you get over here, you realise it's in front of you and it's happening.
"We got our first training session in yesterday and we've got Scotland up first. We're buzzing for that".
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