Shelbourne defender Kameron Ledwidge would be forgiven for feeling a bit like Lemuel Gulliver, washing up on the shoreline of this new League of Ireland season.
And it's nothing to do with his stature. It's more a case that at just 23, he may as well be an elder statesman in a Lilliputian landscape populated by an ever-growing array of 16 and 17-year-old starlets.
Tottenham-bound St Pat's player Mason Melia and Shamrock Rovers forward Michael Noonan have led that charge but others like another Hoop in Victor Ozhianvuna, Cork City's Cathal O'Sullivan and Dundalk's Vinnie Leonard are just three of those who have already left their imprint across the two divisions in recent months.
Ledwidge came into 2025 firmly established in a Shels back four that proved the bedrock beneath last season's dramatic league title triumph.
And it's the former Republic of Ireland Under-21 international's growing maturity that his tough task master of a manager Damien Duff cited when club and player agreed a new deal running until November 2026 last summer.
Kameron Ledwidge believes he has matured as a person and a player at Shelbourne, and is impressed with how his side's strikers have started the season. #rtesport pic.twitter.com/BLkXVYdPx5
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) February 26, 2025
"With age and being around older people and older lads in the changing room, it makes you mature more.
"I think I was kind of that kid coming back from Southampton. In England, under-23s football or under-18s football is different to first-team. When you're around older people, you learn a lot more and the manager has been a big help with that and the coaching staff with me personally. It's made me grow up."
Ledwidge was part of that pre-Brexit generation of Irish youngsters who could leave these shores in their mid-teens, the Finglas-born Ballymun native joining Southampton from St Kevin's Boys aged 16 in the summer of 2017.
He recalls a Saints set-up thronged with Irish players from the Under-18s to the seniors including current Saints and Ireland midfielder Will Smallbone, Michael Obafemi, Will Ferry and Jonathan Afolabi among a double-figure contingent at St Mary's headed by the now-retired Shane Long at the time.
But even so, like with any young person far away from home, it wasn't always easy to adapt despite the supports available at Southampton.
"It was good (but) I probably didn't get the best out of myself over there. I don't know why. I still ask myself the questions as well but probably being away from home at such a young age, I thought - was not hard but - I wasn't used to it," he says, before quipping that Duff does mischievously call him "a mammy's boy".
Ledwidge would return to Dublin when he signed for Shelbourne in mid-2021 during the tenure of Duff's predecessor Ian Morris - himself and midfielder JJ Lunney are the two longest-serving members of the current squad.
Playing senior men's football from the age of 20 has brought him on massively and it's something that the Melia and Noonan generation have been fast-tracked to do from a younger in the post-Brexit reality where they can't cross the Irish Sea until the age of 18.
Former Ireland international and current Dundee United manager Jim Goodwin once told this writer the development could work in LOI players' favour in terms of being more seasoned pros than their English academy counterparts.
Not that Ledwidge would swap his travels for a different timeline in which he could have followed the Melia template.
"I'm not one for regretting anything but I've learned from mistakes I've made back then - not really mistakes - but I've grown up and learned from what I should have done or shouldn't have done and you learn and you grow as a player and as a person with that experience," he says, although he does enthuse about the increasing opportunities for young players domestically now being "good for the league".
"Family" is the word he readily reaches for to describe the atmosphere at Shels and a reason why he feels the new signings like Mipo Odubeko, Ellis Chapman and Kerr McInroy have adapted so quickly in a winning start to the new campaign.
Odubeko and strike partner Sean Boyd, one of the heroes of last season's title win, have gelled remarkably quickly as evidenced in the first two rounds of the season - the 3-1 win over Derry City and last Friday's victory at Waterford when the latter set up the newcomer's winner.
"(They've been) really sharp since the start of pre-season," said Ledwidge, who has shifted wide to left-back for the first few games this season.
"Obviously Mipo is a really good player - athletic - I think he's hit the ground running and I think the two of them are gelling really well together up top and playing off each other really well and obviously that's helping the team now and long may it continue."
And their form bodes well for tonight against a Shamrock Rovers team fresh off the back of an impressive UEFA Conference League campaign, even though Ledwidge is under no illusion that laying down a marker or not, the campaign is still immensely young.
"I've watched their games the last few weeks," he says.
"Obviously they've done well in Europe this year which is great for the league as well. They've really done well in Europe, and they should be up there (in the league) but the league is only starting, so still a long way to go.
"We'll do our best to beat them, we've had a good start but there are a lot of games to go, so we'll just see how it goes throughout the season."
