Dublin hurlers won't be going into the new year looking to just make up the numbers - they're looking to compete for the game's biggest prizes, according to captain Eoghan O'Donnell.
That will be music to the ears of the new man in charge, Micheál Donoghue, who it would appear measures success only in titles won. Donoghue took over from Mattie Kenny following this year's championship campaign and, with All-Ireland titles at club and county level already on his CV, the Claringbridge man isn't in Dublin just to sightsee.
"Success is what every player is after and Dublin hurlers are no different. We really have to target silverware," O'Donnell said. "When you're finished your playing career and you look back, it's not enough just to get the pat on the back and say 'you did your part' or 'you were a good young player', you really have to be able to look back at silverware."
Dublin's last Leinster success, which will celebrate it's 10-year anniversary next summer, helped inspire many of the generation of players who currently wear the sky blue. Full-back O'Donnell is well aware of what a similar victory for the present-day squad could do for the small-ball game in the capital.
"A Leinster championship in Dublin would be a huge success and it would be just what is needed for the group to show that the work we're putting in has us on the right track and we are doing the right things.
"It's like a reward for the hard work that's been put in and I think it would just kickstart everything in Dublin and instil that sense of belief that we are a top team when we perform and when we play to our ability we can come out and win the big things."
The Whitehall Colmcille man's enthusiasm for the new regime is impossible to miss. It may be Christmas week but, with the modern inter-county player, thoughts of the dry sod of summer are never far away. Donoghue's winter programme has kept the fire burning. That programme delivered an All-Ireland club title to Clarinbridge in 2011 and the inter-county equivalent for Galway in 2017.
"It's going very well. Micheál has brought a bit of freshness that the lads are lapping up," O'Donnell beams. "Micheál has been there before, he's won All-Irelands with Galway and with the club as well. The lads respect that this is a man who has a template that works and he's trying to implement that in Dublin now. Lads have been very receptive and things have been going very well.
"He has a top class coaching set-up with him and that's where the main focus has been on the pitch sessions and getting the standard up and the quality up, so it's been going very well."
The Dublin penchant for following every forward step on the hurling scene with at least two steps in the opposite direction has pre-dated O'Donnell's tenure with the squad - and even the provincial winners of 2013's time - but the feeling that it's high time hurling in the capital became a consistent force appears to run deep with the current group.
"The story of my career with Dublin is that we have massive potential but haven't realised it yet," O'Donnell surmised. "We're putting in a huge amount of work in Dublin and I think we're constantly improving and that goes across the board in that every county is working hard and improving.
"It's matter of trying to get all the advantages and the small yards that we can and get a consistent approach to games so that, on our day, we can beat any team in the country. But hurling is competitive - you have to do that time and time again.
"It's about establishing consistency and a performance level that every day we go out we perform to our full potential. Unfortunately as results have shown, we haven't quite managed to do that. Micheál's number one goal will be trying to get us to that potential every day."
But how does a panel bridge that gap? The gap between thinking it can be done and knowing you are going to do it. For inspiration, Dublin's hurlers don't have to look far.
"We only have to look no further than the Dublin footballers here," O'Donnell remarked. "They have that mentality and they have that belief in themselves. The Limerick hurlers are no different. The same culture is in Kilkenny, they're just born winners and they know that when games come to crunch time they're going to get over the line and I think that's where we need to get to.
"When we're in a tight game, when our backs are to the wall, that you can come out the right side of these games. The more you do that, the more belief is instilled in the team that you're going to come out the right side of the result."
O'Donnell had a good up close and personal look at how Dessie Farrell's footballers comported themselves earlier this year. The hurlers' early exit from championship competition led Farrell to pick up the phone to O'Donnell and invite him onto his panel for the remainder of the footballers' campaign.
Although that season would ultimately end in failure - with a one-point All-Ireland semi-final defeat to eventual champions, Kerry - O'Donnell learned much from the experience.
"I put a lot of thought into it when Dessie rang and asked me to come on board," he said. "I was very upfront with Dessie, I said it would just be a temporary thing, that I was going to commit to the Dublin hurlers again this year. I was aware that there were players leaving - Dublin hurling is my passion.
"I've been on the panel for 10 years now so it's something that I've given a massive commitment to and I fully believe that there's potential in this group, so to win something with this group would be unbelievable.
"For the time being, hurling is my main focus - my only focus. Whatever happens down the line, I'd just have to see what the personal circumstances were. I'm still relatively young, there's work and travel and a whole load of things. You wish you could do everything, but unfortunately with the time commitment involved, it's not an option.
"I really enjoyed my time with the footballers and I wouldn't rule anything out, it's just that I've no idea what I'm going to be doing in a year's time, let alone further down the line."
The sliding doors of GAA coaching meant O'Donnell's time with Farrell's squad didn't quite overlap with his hurling manager from the 2018 campaign, Pat Gilroy. The St Vincent's man, who brought the footballers to the promised land in 2011 to end a 16-year drought, is back in familiar surrounds having taken up a coaching role with the senior footballers for 2023.
"Pat is a legend in the GAA and he's very much one of our Dublin GAA legends so he's a massive addition to that football team," O'Donnell said. "Obviously he won the All-Ireland in football and arguably kickstarted this whole new wave of Dublin success.
"He's just an unbelievably direct, straight-talking person that has this in-depth comprehension for structure, organisation and culture. You know what you get with Pat. He's going to be very brutally honest with you, which is all you can ask for as a player.
"He has extremely high standards and if you don't live up to those standards, you're let know very quickly. I don't know what role he's taken with the footballers, I'd actually love to see what he's doing with them because the stuff that he implemented with us was brilliant and it's still a lot of the same structure and a lot of the things that we carry forward today.
"I'm sure when he was working with Stephen Cluxton and Paul Flynn and Bernard Brogan and all these lads, I'm sure it's the same traits that they brought through in all the years with Jim Gavin and now Dessie."
