It takes about three hours to fly from Wellington to Sydney. For the ACT Brumbies, it felt a lot longer than that last Sunday.
As much as they might have liked to leave the memories of their horror 56-7 loss to the Hurricanes behind them, trapped on a plane they were forced into miserable reflection.
On Monday morning they were confronted with video of the club's worst ever defeat. It was depressing viewing. Only after sitting through that was it time to move on, according to coach Andy Friend.
''They hurt a lot after last week's game,'' he said. ''As a team we talked about it straight after the game, then we had a very long flight back. There wasn't a lot of talking going on.''
Tonight in Brisbane the Brumbies face the challenge of rebounding.
Ordinarily they could take some confidence from their history of dominance over the Queensland Reds. They've lost just once in 14 contests since 1996.
But while the Brumbies have been soul-searching, the Reds have been buoyed by their upset win against the Auckland Blues. Their creative midfield of Berrick Barnes and Digby Ioane has been in hot form, and with their own season over, the Reds are falling into a familiar role as spoilers of other teams' parties.
For first-year coach Friend, this week is another test in what has been already an intensely difficult season.
While tonight is certainly about restoring lost pride, far more importantly it's about keeping a season alive.
''If you've copped a hammering like that, it's always a challenge to show that it was a one-off,'' Friend said yesterday.
''We're still very much alive in the competition and in a position where if we perform well in the next three weeks we can make the top four. And that's the focus more than it is to erase what happened last week.''
Dusting off from a major thumping to win the next week is one of sport's toughest tasks. Typically a team gets walloped for a good reason. It doesn't follow that seven days later all their problems disappear.
Yet curiously some of the very worst performances in the major Australian codes have preceded a stirring recovery a few days later.
Take the Canberra Raiders for example. In their inaugural season they were easybeats, losing 54-3 to that year's premiers the Parramatta Eels. The next week the Raiders were elated 12-11 winners against Newtown.
The AFL's biggest losers of all time were the Melbourne Demons of 1979. Fitzroy put 238 points on the Dees for a whopping 190-point victory margin. But, having crawled out of their holes midweek, the Demons restored confidence and pride with a 29-point win against Essendon seven days later.
The Brumbies have managed to bounce back from their heavy defeats in the past. They recovered from a 44-10 belting at the hands of the NSW Waratahs in 1996 to beat the eventual finalists the Durban Sharks 44-31 at Canberra Stadium.
According to sports psychologist Dr Clark Perry, who worked with the Wallabies during Eddie Jones's coaching tenure, Friend's players can do the same tonight if their heads are right.
''Too often we look at a massive scoreline and think, 'Geez, we got smashed' without understanding the little reasons why we got smashed.
''In this age of technology you can review a match and break it down into tangible things you can fix. With that your confidence can come from knowing you can execute those little thing better.''
Perry now works for an international consultancy company RogenSI. One of his fellow directors is Australian swimming great Kieran Perkins, who famously recovered from a dreadful heat in the 1500m at the 1996 Olympics to win gold from lane eight.
Perry said Perkins was an example of how a terrible performance could give an athlete a motivational springboard. However, he added that motivation and the ensuing confidence was bound to be fragile.
Brumbies captain Stephen Hoiles is aware of the challenge of keeping his troops' heads up this week if things don't go well early on. The worry will be if the defensive frailty his team showed last weekend to concede eight tries appears again. Holes would be opened by the likes of Barnes or flyhalf Quade Cooper.
''It's very hard to put your finger on what exactly went wrong last weekend,'' Hoiles said. ''It can flatten you so easily when you get try after try put on you. We can't afford to defend or play like we did last week.''
In Friend's view, the key to the Brumbies getting back on the winners' list tonight is taking lessons but not memories from the Wellington walloping.
'' You can harp on these things too much, in my view,'' Friend said.
''We've spoken about it, we know it wasn't acceptable, we know we've got to do to be better.''
If they don't, it'll be another year of looking on enviously when finals come around.
Email a friend