Rising star: Jonathan Sexton
Ireland's November campaign saw the re-launch of an old brand of Irish rugby with a few new flashes of colour around the edges.
Puma's new shirt is possibly the best of the new strips on the block at the moment, but we are in fact talking about the team. There's the pack of old, with Paul O'Connell at the fore most of the time. There's the familiar strength through adversity at the scrum. There's Brian O'Driscoll at the heart of so much of the action and dynamism in the backs.
But there's a couple of new faces on the block as well, slipping seamlessly into the slots left by more senior players and boding well for a continuance of Ireland's recent success.
Ireland's November did start slowly. Within three minutes they had given away a try to Australia, largely a piece of leakage through a rust-hole.
But for that final twenty minutes against Australia we saw the Ireland of old: powerful up front, sweeping and dynamic in the backs. They never looked back.
A Fiji team that had caused some frustration to Scotland was brushed aside and then came World Champions South Africa, already elected IRB Team of the Year. Maybe had that match been played a couple of weeks earlier, that award might have been tinged with a different shade of green, for Ireland utterly eclipsed the Boks in Dublin.
We now await what comes next. Ireland's scrum needs some serious work; for all of Cian Healy's talents with the ball in hand, he was humbled in the tight a few times. On the other side of the scrum, John Hayes is still living on borrowed time.
You can sometimes get away with it, but Ireland's Six Nations counterparts from Edinburgh to Etna will have watched that shaky set piece and begun planning. There is a weakness.
But the line-out is as indestructible as ever and in Rob Kearney there is a man you just cannot afford to kick a loose ball onto. Ireland are in pole position at the end of a highly successful November. Declan Kidney's IRB award is richly deserved.
Star man: Brian O'Driscoll is inimitable.
Rising star: The king is gone, long live the king. As Ronan O'Gara approaches rugby retirement, the Irish fly-half reins my have been wrested from him by Jonathan Sexton at last. Sexton has been waiting in the wings for a long, long time and finally against South Africa he came of age. Ireland's playmaking is in safe hands.
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