Andrew Porter has faced bigger demons than England or France or the All Blacks or South Africa.
The Lions will select the Ireland loosehead, Andy Farrell knows his man well, with confidence, he is a man who can overcome.
Certainly he was able to overcome a mic-drop moment here at Clontarf RFC's photoshoot as I try to grasp the time line surrounding his large, distinctive tattoo of his deceased mother Wendy - the reporter didn't cover himself in glory, read on if you can.
Porter, don't forget, is a tough guy and those who have his confidence (such as RG Snyman) talk of his quiet determination, his prodigious ability to learn, and go back in to learn some more.
They talk of a figurative flick-switch; rugby is an eighty-minute game which requires keeping concentration amid great physicality and it is lapses in concentration, players switching off for nano-seconds, that costs games.
Porter's ability to stay in the moment, his strength of character is such that his tackle statistics match those of back-row forwards.
For a player who has to wait for the scrum to come up before engaging in other duties and by which time the ball could be 40 metres away on another side of the pitch, he still regularly posts a higher tackle number than at least one if not two of those back-rows.
The Dubliner's flip-switch, it has been said, isn't on/off...it's on/turbo.
All good from a Cabinteely boy growing up in a soccer hotbed where Cabinteely FC, operating out of Kilbogget Park, claimed the largest under-age section in the country, Stephanie Roche of 2014 UEFA/Puskas 'wondergoal' fame and Jason Knight are former players.
But then Andrew was toddling along with dad Ernie, a centre at Old Wesley, to the club's mini-rugby programme at four years-of-age: "I'm told I just had incredible energy and that my parents need to burn it off," he says dryly.
Porter was down for mixed secondary school St Andrews in Booterstown, a highly-rated hockey, decent basketball and mid-ranked rugby private school. He would be starting with the August 2008 intake.
Considered progressive rather than full-on academic it seems, looking back, the right place for a boy whose mother had passed.
Says Porter: "I don't know why I was sent to St Andrews, to be honest, I think one of my cousins got kicked out of Wesley or something and maybe Andrews reformed him or something.
"Maybe my parents thought it'd be good for me, to put me on the straight and narrow or something, my mom was a big hockey player, maybe that was in there but I wouldn't change having gone there."
That's confused me, your mom was part of the decision?
From where he answers heartbreakingly: "Yeh, my mom died, literally, the week before I went into first year. So I remember, like, it was the funeral, and then I had my first day of school, yeah, which was, yeah, it was, it was strange...
"But, sure, I suppose my old man just wanted to help take my mind off things and, yeah, throw me in. Throw me in a new environment and hopefully there's enough distraction there to help me get through..."
Porter is much loved by Irish rugby fans, much loved for the tattoo of his mom Wendy which he had done in his teens, a thoughtful, deeply caring gesture, reflective of a story many can relate too. Grief is not-selective.
Clumsy question, phrased badly, answered in a way that has me wrongfooted, ashamed I had the timeline wrong. Porter picks up the ball nonetheless and runs with it, his love for Wendy Joan Porter (nee Priestman) is the thing.
It had him playing hockey too because his mom wanted him too, indeed his similarly-aged JCT and SCT schoolmate Jordan Larmour was also both rugby-hockey, an Ireland U16 international with the stick.
Almost sixteen years later Andrew Porter is a 75-timed capped Ireland international, a double-Grand Slam winner, a European Champions Cup and four-time URC winner and the only Ireland player deemed worthy of a the Six Nations programme front cover to himself this year.
No extra Ireland silverware this season but the loosehead isn't writing it off as a disaster: "It's tough, you're obviously giving your best stuff when you're playing your country.
"I mean, we only lost one game but that's the way the table turned out and it goes to show again that every point counts in a competition like that where margins are so small between, between the team.
"So you can look back on it and say there is lots that went right and some things that didn't go right but look at it this way, you are playing against the best teams in the world."
Nonetheless, there were those four wins from five and there isn't a rugby pundit on the planet who doesn't think Porter will be wearing the Lions no1 shirt for the First Test in Brisbane on July 19.
Ah, the Lions, something that will close something of a circle in his life.
Chosen to tour with the 2021 Lions he had even been fitted for all the gear, the blazer and the 200-or-so pieces to go with it - 'AP' printed on each piece - before injuring his toe playing for Leinster against Glasgow the week before the squad was due to assemble.
It was, he admits, a huge disappointment - and indeed he is currently the wider catalogue model for Lions kit suppliers Canterbury - not least as he had a particular fascination with the Lions since he was a youngster.
A line he can trace from Santa, follows on to Wendy's and post-Wendy's time.
"I remember every time there was a Lions tour coming around, I'd always get the jersey for Christmas and those jerseys you would get they would always be the talking point going to mini-rugby training or something.
"I definitely remember I had the 2005 New Zealand tour and it had HSBC written on it and, obviously, I remember that and all the talk when Brian O'Driscoll was put over on his head, broke his collarbone.
"Once, when I went to rugby camp in 2009 in France, the one run by Nigel Osbourne, I remember sitting on the floor of a bar or a pub watching O'Gara giveaway that penalty that cost them the Second test against South Africa."
Moreover there will be some laughter, some soft slagging as he meets up with the Lions 2025 coaching staff, specifically with John Fogarty who will be Scrum Coach - there is the little matter of a 2012 encounter...
"I was delighted when I heard Fogs was chosen, he has done great work with Leinster and Ireland and it speaks volumes for people's appreciation of him as a coach and as a person but I still remember my first run in with Fogs.
"It was at Leinster under-16 trials down in Wanderers and I remember I trained really well, thought I did well. Then sure at the end of it, he was like 'Look, you're a great player and everything, you're just not big enough at the moment...'
"And that was when I was in fourth year and then I think from that day, I was like, we're gonna do everything I can to not have that ever said to me again after this day.
"And after that day, I never said anything to Fogs but we were chatting a few months ago, maybe last year or something, on that and he was like 'Oh, shit, I felt so bad that day, your face just dropped...'"
John Fogarty can't have known at the time but the kid was made of sterner stuff, he had overcome much more, a far bigger challenge, at the school gates in 2008.
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