Fifteen minutes before the match started he had the Irish team in a huddle, led them from the front around the pitch to light ripples of applause from the few thousand who were in the stadium.
A home crowd anxious to claim him for the last time in an Irish shirt at Lansdowne Road, Paul O’Connell, had it been in his grasp, would have choreographed for a better ending than Wales ruining a so far perfect run towards the World Cup.
But just as he was before the match the Irish lock was clear in his thinking after it. This was a closing of a chapter rather than the end of the book, and now more of a career full of the possibilities of the next few months than a lament for his last outing at home in a green shirt.
Bittersweet but without the freight that the full closure a career brings, his mood was frustration and embarrassment, pleasure and gratitude. Disappointment.
“It’s nice the reaction I got. But it was embarrassing. We just lost a match,” he said of the post game walk across the Lansdowne Road pitch with his son Paddy.
“I certainly felt rusty in the match. First hit out it is hard to play well but I really appreciated the crowd at the end even when I came out for the warm-up and my name was announced. But you know you’ve just lost a game. It’s not nice to walk into the middle of the pitch and give the crowd a wave.
“That’s the disappointing part of it. I think Dublin is a great city. I love playing here and it’s an incredible place. I was really disappointed with the day but hopefully in a few months when I look back, I look back on it as a really great occasion.”
As ever self critical and exacting it's exactly how the fans would expect him to be and even in the pouring rain, when Ireland sent bodies piling into the Welsh defence as the minutes ticked down, O'Connell realised that the margins between the teams were greater than a final, decisive call from the TMO.
Was the difference between the teams really that slight?
"I don't think so," he said critically. "The penalty count was a big thing. Wales are a big side and we gave them a good few cracks at us on a five-metre scrum. Leigh Halfpenny had a good few kicks at goal and we gave them 50 or 60 metres as well so . . . you can't blame that on a 15-6 penalty count."
Improvement all around and regaining a few of the things the team have let slip were the main themes. In his mind too, rustiness and maybe a lack of sharpness in his first start for a while was irking him.
But it would all have been resolved had Ireland won the match. Even if Welsh manager Warren Gatland suggested that Ireland may have not wanted to show everything they had, played "narrow" and "never troubled " Wales when they had the ball in hand, defeat is hard to digest.
“Victory is always important,” said O’Connell, his spirit and passion undiminished even as he was being coaxed to say that the love in with the crowd overshadowed everything. Not possible. Not with O’Connell.
“That (victory) underpins everything we do. I think when we get a certain amount of things in place it will put us in a good position to win. If we don’t do that we don’t have a chance of winning.”
The long goodbye is over. He’s thankful.
