AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- Peter O'Mahony has been through an awful lot this season which is why captaining the British & Irish Lions in the first Test against the All Blacks will not faze or distract him in the slightest.
He is as proud a Munsterman as you will find. As captain of the Irish province - a side he has been with since 2009 - it was he who spoke for the players after the tragic death of Anthony Foley. It was he who skippered them on their remarkable run of form to the Guinness PRO12 final. And it is he who will lead out the Lions on Saturday in Eden Park.
For the first time since 1930 the Lions tour captain will not start the first Test. It is to Sam Warburton's boundless credit that he will park any disappointment for the good of the team; it is testament to O'Mahony's relentless work ethic, reliability and natural work ethic that Gatland turned to him for the honour instead of someone like Alun Wyn Jones.
O'Mahony's sliding doors moment came on March 18. It was a couple of hours before Ireland's match against England and Jamie Heaslip was sidelined with a hamstring injury. O'Mahony stepped in, caused havoc, was crowned Man of the Match, and he went from potential Lions bolter to Lions certainty.
On this tour he has been the glue in the pack. He isn't the loudest but he has learned under Paul O'Connell, Donnacha O'Callaghan, Ronan O'Gara and the late Axel Foley was leadership is all about. He isn't one to talk about his own qualities, though, so it's the role of others to give an insight into just what O'Mahony is about.
"He's exactly the character you need - a guy who would get on with things if he wasn't involved in the Test squad," Lions coach Graham Rowntree said. "He would pull along the rest of that group and we need that on Lions tours.
"He's got the respect of the group, that's for sure, by his actions and not just by what he's been saying as a captain. He gets on with things. It's that Munster kind of aggression around everything we do in training, determination, almost 'follow me, lads'. He has that Paul O'Connell kind of DNA in him, being a Munster man. He's a good guy as well, very diligent, not afraid in training of saying, 'Lads, this isn't good enough.' He's pulling along the standards, along with the coaches."
His Munster teammate CJ Stander added: "He's a great captain - we all know that. He's ready to do it."
He is one of the top lineout forwards in world rugby; he has an incredible knack of stealing opposition ball. Set piece will be king in the Test series and he is Steve Borthwick - the Lions forwards coach - incarnate on the pitch.
There are similarities between Borthwick and O'Mahony; both quiet leaders, the sort players around them rave about, but seem unsuited to the limelight. As O'Mahony sat next to Gatland in Thursday's press conference, he was quiet, reluctant to catch eyes and spoke softly but with an absence of rhetoric. He is as you see him.
After a season interrupted by injury - he missed both the start of the November Tests and the Six Nations - he peaked at the right time in the closing stages of the campaign. He was a player Gatland simply could not leave out and with Munster running through his veins, he thrives off victory.
Gatland's sentiments before the Maori All Blacks game seem ever relevant now. "It's not something that you can quantify what Munster bring to a game. It's a special pride, sometimes the performances they can produce, it's done consistently over the years.
"Being able to dig deep and bring performances from places where individuals and collectively people often can't do. That's what Peter will brings to the team."
Gatland wants the other leaders in the pack to work around O'Mahony and be the beating heart of this Lions team on Saturday. For O'Mahony his challenge is to park the pressure of the captaincy and focus on performing, but you sense that isn't an issue for him.
O'Mahony predicts a "different animal" will turn up to face the All Blacks on Saturday, both on and off the field with hoards of Lions fans arriving in Auckland, and he is thriving off the energy and excitement in the group. But in the quiet moments, he may allow himself a chance to reflect on a season punctuated by tragedy, personal achievement and now one of the highest honours in rugby.
"It's Lions against the All Blacks and you have got to use everything you have had over your entire rugby career and try and use it all for Saturday," O'Mahony said. "Axel's a rugby man, so he would have told us all 'play your game, play what you do and what you know'.
"He'd have said there's a reason there's 45 players here now who have been selected. So just go out and play the game you know and what you're here for. There's no point in trying to be something you're not over here.
"You've been picked for a reason, so if you go out and play as well as you can, no one's going to fault you for that."