How stand things with the Dessie Farrell regime?
After months of low-intensity fare against mostly Division 2 teams - except for Roscommon and Derry, the latter of whom were, like Dublin, only nominally second tier - the Dubs brace themselves for the whirlwind intensity of their greatest foils of the past decade. The Jimmy Whites to their Stephen Hendry.
The blissful cockiness of the Hill 16 contingent is heavily ingrained at this point but some are surely concerned that the team aren't exactly primed for these battle conditions yet.
For Farrell's managerial reign, it feels like a critical moment.
After the 2021 semi-final defeat, their first championship loss in seven years, he invoked the lean years and expressed confidence that Dublin supporters would show "patience" in the years ahead. Might a quarter-final defeat at the end of humdrum season prompt a clamour for change?
A hero of the '95 All-Ireland win - in retrospect one of the most important in Dublin's history - Dessie's image since taking over has been one of humble custodian rather than managerial svengali, a la Jim McGuinness.
Assuming the position at the end of 2019, Farrell, a multiple All-Ireland winning manager at Under-21 level, was the natural successor but was placed in an invidious position.
His predecessor Jim Gavin had unkindly left precisely zero room for improvement. Dessie's '95 team-mate departed with the mythical five-in-a-row achieved and as close to a perfect managerial reign as is possible after seven years in charge.
Even Mick O'Dwyer, the manager who presided over the only comparable dynasty in Gaelic football, had departed in 1989 with Kerry football already in recession after three successive Munster championship losses to Cork.
The old Brian Clough maxim about wanting "to win it better" wasn't really a feasible ambition. Tony Soprano's line in the pilot episode about feeling like "I came in at the end, the best is over" springs to mind.
Diarmuid Connolly retired in 2019, admitting in a rare interview this week that the fire had gone out. In the empty summer of 2020, Jack McCaffrey said sayonara, deciding he wanted to focus on other projects, namely a medical career, for a while.
During the late 2010s, talk of eternal Dublin dominance was nearly on a par with climate change as one of the great anxieties of the age. This didn't exactly wane after Dessie's first campaign. The stripped-down Covid championship ended on the Saturday before Christmas with Dublin claiming their sixth All-Ireland victory on the trot and possibly the most routine and unadorned of them all.
But then things started to derail spectacularly in 2021, beginning with the infamous clandestine training session in March.
The long lens cameraman hiding in the bushes captured the scene, prompting at least one recently retired Dublin player to publicly cancel his online subscription to the Irish Independent. Dessie himself was suspended for 12 weeks by Dublin GAA.
Following on from that was Stephen Cluxton's late career sabbatical/ presumed retirement, which dominated press conferences for months and to which Farrell could only offer curiously bland and uncertain answers.
Needless to say, the 'shared many times' whatsapp messages purported to have the inside scoop on what was going on in the camp.
The Dubs won Leinster again but compared with previous years, their form was wan and insipid.
Their psychologically battered Leinster rivals got to luxuriate in the pure ecstasy of the single digit defeat, a pleasure they hadn't known since around 2012. Even before the hammer fell in the second half of the semi-final against Mayo, they had lost the All-Ireland favourites tag to Kerry.
For RTÉ football analyst Paul Flynn, it was Dessie's unfortunate lot to preside over a period of inevitable decline, brought about by the aging of the medal-laden 2010s crop and comparative drop-off in quality in the succeeding generation. The best he could was halt the slide as long as possible.
"The big challenge that Dessie has been faced with is taking over from Jim Gavin, under whom we never lost for five years," Flynn tells RTÉ Sport.
"And now we're back to being a normal team, getting to the semi-finals, getting pipped occasionally. Realistically, the previous era of dominance could never be maintained forever."
Their relegation to Division 2 in early 2022, a startling idea a year earlier, hinted at a more precipitous decline than was anticipated. Though that notion was subsequently confounded by their comparatively strong form in last year's championship. They giddily ripped through the Leinster whipping boys once more and the consensus subsequently formed that only an injury to Con O'Callaghan had perhaps cost them another title.
'Confounding' is a reasonable term to describe the whole operation in 2023. Stephen Cluxton, at the age of 41, abruptly decided to end his exile at the tail end of the league and the first anyone knew of it was before their final league game against Louth.
Jack McCaffrey returned to the set-up, though has played fitfully. Paul Mannion, a Donegal Boston player in 2022, is back in the fold.
Off the field, old friends were back on the scene. Pat Gilroy, who made the early hard yards in transforming the Dubs from underachieving glamour boys to hard-nosed champions, has been drafted in on the psychology end of things.
During the early rounds of the league, Ger Brennan announced that Dublin would win the All-Ireland this year but that it would be "the last one for a long time."
It all painted the 2023 season as a kind of Last Dance scenario for the 2010s team, though it's hard to imagine the returning Clucko consenting to having a fly-on-the-wall documentary crew tracking his every waking hour.
For the elder players, Cluxton, James McCarthy and Mick Fitzsimons, there is also the not inconsiderable carrot of an unprecedented ninth All-Ireland SFC medal, eclipsing Spillane and co.
Every time you think the Dubs are back to being the slick machine of old, they phone it in the next day out in a turgid match.
Their brief dip into Division 2 was supposed to provide us with a series of comedy massacres - get a load of this hammering in this U14 game type scorelines - but didn't at all. Only Meath were properly rinsed and one got the distinct impression that was just for spite.
They dished out a brutal hammering of Louth in the Leinster final, reminiscent of the peak Gavin era team, though the most memorable image to emerge from the game was Dean Rock's visible disgust after Ciarán Kilkenny opted against slipping him a handpass for a handy goal late in the game. Perhaps the first petulant fisted point in championship football.
Either side of the swaggering dismissal of Louth, there were subdued and listless performances against Kildare and the Rossies. The infamous six-minute handpassing session was notable as much for Dublin's passivity and helplessness in stopping it as for the tactic itself.
For years, their rivals knew with crushing certitude what Dublin were going to turn up. Always with the same metronomic efficiency. These days, you can't be so sure.
Thanks to the evenness of the competition, and Kerry's often underwhelming form, the Dubs remain the favourites for this year's championship.
And they still have the star power to cut loose. For Flynn, the returning core of players give them an edge on 2022.
"The squad is five players better (than in 2022), they have choices to make on who will start or finish games. That's not a luxury they had last year. Maybe I'm letting my heart rule their head but I think they'll edge it.
"The great thing is that sport thrives on uncertainty of outcome. For a couple of years there, that probably wasn't really the case for Dublin supporters.
"We're back to having a nice, nervy feeling before games. I think if they do it this year, it'll be really appreciated by the supporters."
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