Ger Brennan pulls no punches when he reflects on Dublin's 2009 'startled earwigs' collapse against Kerry.
"We s**t ourselves," he says now. "We were mentally weak and we didn't have the balls to stand up to Kerry and try to overcome them."
Two years later, Pat Gilroy's men went into the All-Ireland SFC final against the Kingdom having lost the previous eight games between the counties. Scarred - but ravenously hungry - they got over the line.
Stephen Cluxton's dramatic late free earned Dublin glory in that decider, and triggered a swing in momentum that's seen the Dubs lord it over Kerry ever since.
It's 13 years since Kerry tasted a championship win against the Sky Blues and, ahead of Sunday's All-Ireland semi-final, Brennan admitted he can see similarities between the current Kingdom crop and the Dubs' class of 2011.
"(Jack O'Connor) has a similar dressing room now (to what) Pat Gilroy had with us going into 2011," Brennan said at an event to mark Friday's Electric Ireland MFC final between Galway and Mayo.
"Will Kerry actually have the belief going into the home straight, whether they're a couple of points up, or a couple behind? Because for me that's all that's going to be in it. That's the question I'd say Jack O'Connor will ask them beforehand.
"Do you want to be known as bottlers, that you can't get over this Dublin team? Or do you want to be known as the team that eventually got the monkey off their back after 13 years of being dominated by Dublin?
"Human beings are human beings. What motivates and triggers us hasn't really evolved that much in the thousands of years we've been on this earth. Being able to find the right words as a manager is part of what makes a manager great and successful."
All the debate and conjecture around this mouthwatering showdown could be distilled into one question: will David Clifford and Con O'Callaghan be fit?
Both have injury concerns; both are talismanic, massively influential figures in their teams' forward lines.
"If Con O'Callaghan and David Clifford are both playing I think it's going down to the wire - possibly extra-time," added Brennan.
"If both lads are injured it's also going down to the wire, possibly extra-time.
"But if either team is missing a Con or a Clifford, the team with the other guy playing is going to progress.
"They are huge parts of their respective forward lines. How they move, the amount of attention they attract opens up space for other players and adds a whole lot to how the forward line moves.
"There's going to be very little between them."
Brennan won two Sam Maguires with Dublin before retiring in 2015. The St Vincent's man is now managing Kildare club Moorefield, having had a stint on the Carlow coaching ticket.
He was part of a group of Dublin players who cast off the tag of 'nearly men' through sheer graft, and was at the coal face as they transitioned from serial under-performers to relentless winners.
And it all changed in that summer of 2011.
"When you look at the 'startled earwigs defeat', we didn't sit down and watch the game back because there was nothing tactically to learn from it," he reflected.
"What happened after that was fairly simple: it was a process in developing mental toughness, weeding out the weak, challenging them, seeing how they respond and the message in which that challenge was put to us was through what I'd call extreme physical exertion in the months of January and February.
"It was as hard a training as any of us had ever experienced. The belief then was, we'd gotten through that so when the chips were down and we were faced with a Kerry or Tyrone, we'd be able to draw on this experience and this belief that we'd been trained and pushed far harder as a group than the previous season, which actually made the games easy.
"In 2010 we went down and beat Kerry in the league. That gave us huge belief when we did face Kerry in the 2011 final. It was the same bunch of players paying each other a year, year and a half later. It was, 'we've nothing to fear from these fellahs', you know?"
Kerry eased past Dublin in the league at a saturated Austin Stack Park back in February. Now the stage is now set for them to prove the pendulum is swinging back their way.
Follow the All-Ireland Football Championship semi-finals this weekend, Galway v Derry (5.30pm on Saturday) and Dublin v Kerry (3.30pm on Sunday), via our live blogs on rte.ie/sport or on the RTÉ News app. Watch live coverage on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player with live radio commentary on RTÉ Radio 1
