Rory Best believes Ireland can pick at the scars inflicted by the most recent World Cup quarter-final defeats to go one better this time.
Skipper Best claims Ireland may have been over-confident going into the 2011 last eight clash against Wales and the meeting with Argentina four years later.
This time around, Joe Schmidt's charges are where they wanted to be after the pool stages - gearing up for a shot at making history in the World Cup quarter-finals, even if it wasn't the smooth passage they had hoped for.
The 47-5 victory over Samoa confirmed Ireland's place in the knock-out stages after previous wins over Scotland and Russia, and the loss to Japan.
Asked what can Ireland do differently from 2015, Best quipped: "Hopefully, we’ll win, which will be different from the last two World Cups, which would be nice!
"Look, I think you gotta try to be prepared. We know that it’s knockouts, and we said after the Japan game that it’s important that we learned our lessons from the last two World Cups I’ve been involved in.
"I’ve looked back at quarter-finals and went, ‘Do you know what? We just weren’t quite where we thought we were'.
"We rolled through two pool stages where we didn’t lose a game. We were full of confidence - maybe a little bit of over-confidence. It’s hard to know.
"It’s really important that we look at that Japan week, coming off the back of a good performance against Scotland and go, ‘Right, what stone did we not leave unturned?’.
"It’s got to be all about rugby this week. We’ll enjoy a bit of down time when it’s there but ultimately it's about knock-out rugby and you don’t get a second chance at it."
Joey Carbery can't wait for what believes will be one of the biggest weeks of the Ireland players' lives.
"There's such an excitement," said Munster out-half Carbery, who was born in New Zealand and moved to Ireland in his early teens.
"There's a huge week coming up, obviously one of the biggest weeks of our lives. There's a huge positive in that.
"We know how much talent is in the group. We stick together, try to block out as much negative stuff as we can and we can overcome anything.
"We've done it before and we just need to do it again. We're building well. It's hard to know where the peak is."
Carbery's own involvement has been curtailed by the ankle injury he suffered in August. He came off the bench to steer Ireland home for almost the last half hour yesterday.
"Hopefully i'll be involved in some sort of way, but I'm finally coming back to my normal self after the ankle," he said.
"It was a tough couple of weeks, but I'm delighted to be back".
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