Last Christmas Joe McCarthy was chilling with his feet up with no inkling of the breakthrough year that lay ahead.
All that has changed for the 21-year-old Leinster tyro as he prepares for his first taste of St Stephen's Day battle against Munster at Thomond Park.
Twelve months ago, McCarthy was in the Blues' academy and enjoying a week off.
READ MORE: Munster's Antoine Frisch eager to impress Andy Farrell in his first St Stephen's Day derby
Tonight, he will be part of a Leinster second row looking to make it four in a row at the Limerick ground, though the Blues are still without Johnny Sexton and Tadhg Furlong, and are much changed from the side that hammered Gloucester in Europe.
He had no idea that his career was about to take off with a first team debut in January against Cardiff Blues and that, by the end of the season, he would come off the bench in the Champions Cup final and start the URC semi-final.
And, by the end of the Autumn series, he would be a senior Ireland international after coming on against Australia.
“No, I didn’t," he said. "I was playing with Trinity and I was hoping maybe in the New Year that I’d get a cap hopefully.
"I didn’t know it was around the corner."
McCarthy made a swift impact, earning a training call-up to the Ireland squad in the Six Nations and impressing Andy Farrell and his coaching staff with his attitude.
He continued on from where he left off this season and got himself on the bench for the Australia game.
“I hadn’t really thought too far ahead," he said. "At the start of the season I was coming back from an injury and I was thinking, ‘just get myself fit’.
"There is so much competition in Leinster and I was like ‘try to get a cap somewhere if I can'. It all kind of kicked off from there.”
He could have been lining out in red rather than blue tonight had his parents not left home for Dublin.
His father - also Joe - hails from Castletownbere in west Cork, his mother from Cashel in Tipperary.
However McCarthy was born in Manhattan, where the family moved when his father worked there for AIB, before coming back to Dublin.
“I was about three years old when I came back," he said.
"We lived in New York out in the suburbs somewhere. I think we lived in an apartment in Manhattan for a year, actually, on the 32nd floor somewhere."
The big lock developed as a rugby player in Blackrock College and Leinster are the beneficiaries, just as Ireland will be at Test level if he continues his rate of progress.
"All my aunts and uncles, they follow me quite closely, they come to almost all my games," he smiled.
"They would all be from Cork and Tipperary so, yeah, there would be split allegiances there.
“Basically all my cousins are from Tipperary and Cork. A lot of my cousins would know (Munster defence coach) Denis Leamy very well, he was here at Leinster as well. So yeah, a big Cashel connection.
“I think my parents are starting to slowly convert. They’re pretty Leinster now because me and my brother are in Leinster at the moment.
"They were very much Munster fans when I was in primary school, but they seem to have converted over. A bit of 'Lunster', I’d say!".
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