After a dozen seasons of grinding, Armagh captain Aidan Forker is hoping that it's a case of lucky 13 as he leads the Orchard County out on All-Ireland final day against Galway on Sunday.
Only three Armagh people have had that honour before, current manager Kieran McGeeney in 2002 and ’03, Seán Quinn in 1953 and Jimmy Smyth in 1977, so he knows he’s in a privileged position.
School teacher Forker also knows that a lot of people will say he deserves a fitting finale from a 13-year career that has produced just two Division 3 crowns and a pre-season O’Fiaich Cup.
But the deep-thinking wing-back also is aware that 'deserve’ doesn’t come into the reckoning and while the scenes at Croke Park after the semi-final win over Kerry were extraordinary, they will mean little if the job isn’t finished against the Tribesmen.
"I think it only becomes special if you go and win it, to be honest," he said.
"Otherwise you're just one of those teams that got to a final and didn't win.
"Yeah, it's nice for the county to be in another final which are quite rare. With your own performance head on and getting the best out of each other, you're going there to win and you're going there to get the best out of yourself and perform.
"There's plenty of time for chat about buzz and memories and all of that craic afterwards."
They're words you can almost imagine coming out of McGeeney’s mouth in the lead up to their own date with destiny in September 2002. Forker embodies a lot of the same leadership qualities that ‘Geezer’ demonstrated.
Literature, psychology and a regimental training routine are all shared passions. In many ways, it seems unusual that it’s taken Forker this long to be named captain given he appeared the obvious fit.
"Sometimes the captain doesn’t always wear the armband," McGeeney noted previously.
Forker knows all about waits though. The wait to be captain took a while, as did his wait to be in an All-Ireland final.
Even at club level, his beloved Maghery had to wait 110 years to win a senior championship. Forker, the metronome of the team, starred on that run and then four years later produced some stunning play in the full-forward line to secure a second title.
"This is season 13," he tells RTÉ Sport. "Listen, that adds to it for me but it counts for very little unless you win things.
"Yeah, 2016 was a very special moment for my club and the history of my club and being part of that was special and what it meant to my family and the people in our community was massive.
"I think this is just it on a bigger scale. I know the memories I have of '02 as a young lad so it would be absolutely brilliant to create those memories for the young people of Armagh and inspire another generation of footballers in Armagh.
"We're punching above our weight because we're a very small county in Ireland. That definitely inspired me and a lot of the boys in the group to date.
"That will not weigh on us at all. It's not a big thing, it's just about going after it as best we can and like we have done. It's another step on the ladder, that's how we've framed it."
Having played all of Armagh’s first two Ulster games against Fermanagh and Down, Forker has found himself being withdrawn from the action in five of their six games since – albeit in the final seconds of the comfortable quarter-final win over Roscommon.
Methodical and analytical, there is no doubting he would have poured over the decision of management to do that, but ultimately the team were successful and that’s the important part.
There was a time when Forker would have been annoyed, not at management but at himself, but a realisation exists that he no longer is that young half-forward who broke through in 2012 and over time he has learned not to be so harsh when self-critiquing.
"I used to be very hard on myself, I have to say. I think standards are important, personal standards are important. A key value I'd have would be about having high standards for everything that you do.
"There's a time to park it but you still have to go after it. So I think it's not about being hard on yourself in a way of punishing yourself. It's about being hard on yourself so you can be better, and I think I've learned that.
"I used to be a little more about the self-punishment rather than knowing this needs to serve me and I need to be better than this.
"So it's flicking that to having higher standards, not, 'why did you do that?' Yeah, it's a mental battle all the time. I enjoy it. I enjoy that stuff, I enjoy reflecting on it."
That reflection would have driven home the message that Armagh have made the final without playing particularly well in recent weeks.
They were unusually passive in the draw with Galway, needing their opponents to hand them a way back into the tie, while the Roscommon quarter-final was littered with handling errors and scrappy passages of play.
Even the first half against Kerry saw them fail to reach the pitch, albeit things improved dramatically after the break.
"Yeah, there definitely is," Forker said when asked was there room for improvement. "But you're playing top-tier teams.
"Those things are going to happen as well so you have to allow for that. But, yeah, we've a lot more in us than we showed against Kerry, especially in the first half, and in the Galway game we were definitely a wee bit flat, we just didn't bring enough of everything that day.
"Thankfully we've clawed our way back and I think that's a testament to the people that we have on the pitch and the character in the group and the mentality of the group.
"We have to get it right to be at the pitch of it on the day to try to beat a very good Galway team. There's no doubt about it, they're probably one of the best teams we've played this year, if not the best."
Watch the All-Ireland Football Championship final, Armagh v Galway, on Sunday from 2.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app and listen to commentary on RTÉ Radio 1
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