These are dog days for Ireland captain Brian O'Driscoll. The sequence of written media, radio and television, thump out a familiar, unwelcome beat on the Tuesday of every Six Nations Championship. But over the years, O'Driscoll, seated alone at the top table at the team hotel, has evolved and adapted.
Now at 29 years old, flashes of the end have loomed into view. They are not threatening. They are not breathing heavily on his collar but O'Driscoll is too well educated in the faculty of Professional Rugby Careers to be blind to what he will eventually meet on the road ahead.
With his injury profile and a season that has lurched and stuttered from the World Cup and has not reached the heights he and the rest of the rugby firmament knows he can achieve, the centre has come to understand that time is no longer a limitless commodity.
In a more invasive way, he is beginning to feel the screw turning.
"I think I'm starting to feel defeats, starting to take them more personally the older I'm getting," he says. "Maybe it is because I can see the end line in sight at some stage but certainly it takes a lot longer than in my younger days to get over bad defeats. There are different types where sometimes you absolutely didn't deserve to win or sometimes you play well and you still lose. It depends on what type of defeat it is. But I've struggled in the last couple of seasons to come to terms with some of them."
This time last year O'Driscoll may not have been feeling the same thoughts as acutely as he does now post World Cup and while the players see those two syllables as poison to any rugby conversation, they linger somewhere in every discussion about the next two months. This past half year the defeats for Ireland have been more boisterous companions than the victories.
"How do I deal with it?" he asks rhetorically. "I probably just go through it in my mind a bit more, where things went wrong, analyse the game a bit more and certainly look at my own game first and foremost and make sure that the next time I go out I won't make those same errors.
"Of course you are going to make some errors in a game but you just make sure you work hard the next week in the aspects where you feel that you let the team down."
In these softly, softly days where the team shows a reluctance to speak loudly about ambition and hopes, there remains a quiet, if less certain, determination. O'Driscoll sees a different sort of pressure, not of expectation in the Six Nations but of improving on the World Cup. The pressure is always there, but the 2008 competition requires a tweak in approach as they try to put the wrongs of last year right this year.
"Maybe we were guilty of being ahead of ourselves last year at World Cup time. We've taken a step back in that respect," he says. "It's probably where we've changed things a little. We were a bit too honest in what we wanted to do. We have our own expectations but we will be keeping them to ourselves."
As captain, he continues to hold the respect of the team. That responsibility is still a spur, not a burden. It demands energy but he's happy to give for what he gets back.
"The captaincy of Ireland is very different from the captaincy of your province because you are only together for a limited time," he says. "Because you are playing with a different standard of player a lot of it takes care of itself. I still enjoy everything that goes with it."
Importantly, O'Driscoll is the net receiver in the relationship and if he is looking for the ingredient that will raise his game from proficient to the dizzy heights it has often been, his position in the team may be it.
"Take away days like today (media) and I still enjoy leading the team out, enjoy having an important voice and I enjoy trying to earn the continued respect of my team-mates," he says. "The day that slides or disappears is the day you stop."
