Like Brian Fenton, another all-time great with limited underage pedigree, Gearóid Hegarty can lay claim to being one of modern Gaelic Games' most celebrated late developers.
Fenton was essentially told that it wasn't going to happen for him when it came to the Dublin senior side.
Hegarty, likewise, had a negligible minor hurling career. He was too early for the sublimely gifted Limerick minor team of 2014, which boasted Cian Lynch, Seamus Flanagan, Sean Finn, Barry Nash (then full-forward), Tom Morrissey, Peter Casey, and which was surprisingly beaten by an unfancied Kilkenny side in that year's All-Ireland final.
There are perhaps parallels to the Dublin '11 minor team in that respect. Clearly the recipe for a relentlessly successful senior team is a gut-wrenching All-Ireland final loss at minor grade.
When Hegarty first did make his mark at inter-county level, it wasn't in hurling. Much like Limerick's revered tactical whizz on the line, Paul Kinnerk, Hegarty's first involvement with inter-county teams was in the big-ball code.
He had played senior for the Limerick footballers a full year before he got any look-in with the hurlers at any age-grade.
Oddly, for someone now associated with the bright lights of elite hurling, his first championship appearance as a Limerick senior GAA player was about as inauspicious as it could possibly get - as a 55th minute substitute for the Limerick footballers in their Munster first-round loss to Tipperary in 2014.
Always tall and rangy, it was under the tutelage of then Limerick football manager John Brudair that he began his evolution into the Hulk-like figure we see bestriding the hurling championship today.
"He brought me in and that completely opened my eyes in terms of what it takes just to be on a senior county panel," Hegarty told the Irish Times in 2021.
"Training in the gym twice a week and on the field three times a week. To really look after your sleep and nutrition, so on and so forth. So, yeah that was a huge learning curve for me."
Hegarty's father Ger, Limerick centre-back during the 90s, was as startled as anyone at his son's development as an inter-county hurler.
"I could see the footballer and watched him playing for UL and he was a powerful footballer," Hegarty Snr told the Irish Times' Sean Moran last summer.
"Did I see ability? I saw loads of it but hurling ability? No. True answer is I did not. Those sublime hands, the vision and the movement and the running off the ball – it's been phenomenal to watch that developing over the last couple of years."
It was only in his final year at Under-21 that Gearóid first made his mark as a county hurler, featuring at half-back in the lop-sided All-Ireland final win over Wexford in late 2015.
He swiftly progressed to the senior ranks, though some distinguished commenters on the Hogan Stand website didn't think much of his elevation, as Hegarty recalled later on.
Limerick were by that stage still among the also-rans at the elite end of the game.
It's still hard to fathom how abrupt Limerick's rise in the modern era was. In the grand and glorious story of John Kiely's reign, his inaugural 2017 campaign is a curiously underwhelming prequel. Hegarty was among the soldiers on a fruitless Saturday evening in Nowlan Park that summer, when Limerick exited the championship at the earliest possible opportunity in a scrappy encounter with a Kilkenny side who were themselves floundering.
Limerick's hurling story in modern times was still marked by fatalism and 'unlimited heartbreak', as the book title goes. Since 1973, they had lost five All-Ireland finals - '74, '80, '94, '96, '07. Hegarty's father had featured in the most scarring of those losses in '94, when Johnny Dooley flagrantly ignored coaches' advice and set in train one of the most devastating late comebacks in finals history.
The fatalism was only banished on the final whistle on that famous August afternoon in 2018, when Limerick - their tortured supporters again fearing the worst - withstood a late comeback from Galway to edge home by a point for the first title in four and a half decades.
Hegarty started every game in that campaign, contributing well as part of their ensemble forward line, though he made little impact in the final itself, and was called ashore for resident super-sub Shane Dowling midway through the second half. At the end of the most thrilling hurling championship in living memory - where people even began to yearn for a boring game at one point - Graeme Mulcahy was the only Limerick forward to earn an All-Star.
It was 2020 when Hegarty truly went stratospheric. He progressed from being another name in the Limerick forward line, usually the first to be whipped off midway through the second half. In 2019, he was withdrawn somewhere between the 50th and 60th minutes in every single game and wasn't chuffed with the arrangement, seeking a meeting with the management
He lit up the Covid campaign. He hit 0-20 from play across five championship matches, whipping over 0-07 from play in a majestic All-Ireland final display as Limerick made light work of Waterford in an empty, floodlit Croke Park less than a fortnight before Christmas.
Limerick's imperial phase had truly begun. A first ever back-to-back arrived in 2021, Hegarty rifling home 2-02 as they crushed Cork in the decider, possibly their greatest display.
To opposition supporters, Hegarty looks like a lab-created nightmare. A dainty, dextrous hurler in the form of a 6ft 5in monster. He thunders across the turf with such ferocity that a seismologist might become concerned. Cuchulainn would take one look at Hegarty and decide he didn't fancy it. In his devastating mixture of power and grace, as well as his somewhat abrupt rise to greatness, he is representative of the entire Limerick team.
Limerick were now habitually being compared with the peak-Cody era Kilkenny, and not just in their facility for accumulating silverware.
The phrase 'playing on the edge' was back in vogue, if it ever left it. Hegarty was zeroed in on. He had been somewhat fortuitous to avoid sanction for a loose slap across the back of Joe Canning in the 2020 semi-final, now the reds started flashing.
He was deservedly sent off against Galway in the league, then undeservedly sent off against Clare in the Munster round robin, the latter a particularly bewildering decision.
Hegarty's finest season was 2020, after which he picked up Hurler of the Year, but last season produced the greatest moments for the highlight reel. Breath-taking goals in the Munster and All-Ireland finals set the scene for Limerick victories, albeit after a struggle. In the memorable provincial decider, he fired the game's only goal, a kind of hurling version of Gazza's dentist chair goal, flipping the ball over Diarmuid Ryan's head.
An outstanding goal from Gearoid Hegarty has seen Limerick spark into life #MunsterHurlingFinal #RTEGAA
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Last year's final was one of his signature games. Coming after a sluggish semi-final display, Hegarty hit 1-05, decorated by the astonishing goal in the opening minutes. There was little surprise when he was asked to stand forward to collect his chunk of Waterford Crystal at the winners' banquet that evening.
Limerick enter the 2023 championship looking more dominant than ever. Last year was a struggle in comparison to the previous couple of campaigns. Shorn of the wizardry of Cian Lynch and Peter Casey in the inside-forward line, they survived a couple of close shaves in the both the semi-final and final en route to completing the three-in-a-row.
After a Limerick procession in the league final, there's even a hint of despair creeping in among the rest of the hurling fraternity that we only be at the midway point of Limerick's dominant era.
In a round of interviews this week, Hegarty was inclined to tamp down talk of 'six-in-a-row' which has circulating around Limerick city - "You hear that nonsense. This is crazy thinking" - and he recalls that time not long ago when hurling was on the back foot in the county and other sports held the foreground.
"I loved growing up watching Munster, the Paul O'Connell days, and I used to go to Thomond Park a lot," Hegarty told RTÉ Sport's Damian Lawlor.
"When I was growing up, it was all Munster jerseys and all soccer jerseys. Nowadays, the majority of things you see is young boys and young girls with Limerick jerseys on and a hurley in their hand.
"It's great to see and it's obviously a result of the success we've had over the last number of years. I idolised sports stars when I was younger and I idolised Limerick hurlers when I was younger. But now there's a lot more kids in and around Limerick that are idolising the senior hurling team.
"Hopefully, that will keep the production line flowing and it will produce more and more success for us over the next God knows how many years."
Watch Waterford v Limerick in the Munster Hurling Championship on Sunday from 1.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on the RTÉ News app or RTÉ.ie/Sport or listen to live commentary on Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
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