Fintan Burke's appearance before the media ahead of the club All-Ireland series has become an annual exercise.
Three years running, the Galway half-back has fronted up for press duties in December/January. "It's obviously a good complaint to have!" he laughed.
It's a reminder once again of the extent of St Thomas' dominance of the ferociously - or infamously - competitive Galway senior hurling championship.
Formed only in the late 1960s out of amalgamation of Peterswell and Kilchreest, the area had a deep tradition in the sport, the former winning a glut of county titles around the turn of the 20th century before falling into irrelevance from the 1930s onwards.
It wasn't until 2012 that the club reached, and won, their first Galway SHC title - a match now mainly remembered for Loughrea's Johnny Maher testing the limits of the county's light-touch officiating policy in the closing stages.
A second county title arrived in 2016; then there was a gap year in 2017 before the imperial phase truly took off in 2018. It's still ongoing.
The club has a 100% record in eight Galway final appearances, the majority of which, in contrast to many dynasties elsewhere, were eked out by narrow-ish margins. In October, they collected a sixth in a row, matching the record of the Turloughmore side of the 1960s.
The big caveat of their reign, however, has been their underwhelming performance in the All-Ireland series.
Portumna, whose domination of Galway hurling in the late 2000s was less prolonged but more emphatic while it lasted, mined four All-Ireland titles in the 2006-14 period.
Thomas' won an All-Ireland at their first attempt in 2013, in an era when the Galway champions won the whole shebang more often than not. Since then, however, their performance outside the county has been patchy at best.
It was partially this record which left them rank outsiders for December's semi-final against Ballygunner. The 2022 champions were installed as massive favourites for the All-Ireland from the moment Ballyhale Shamrocks were beaten in Kilkenny.
The Waterford kingpins had mercilessly mown down all comers in Munster and were regarded as champions-elect in some quarters. Did this narrative provide a little extra fuel for Thomas' on their journey down to Portlaoise?
"Obviously, it was part of it. You would have gotten snippets of podcasts and stuff where they were writing you off personally and writing the team off," Burke acknowledges.
"I'd be lying if I said it wasn't part of the motivating factor, being written off.
"But I suppose it's down to the history, as well, of losing the other All-Ireland semi-finals and probably not doing ourselves justice.
"Lads were nearly looking forward to it, having a crack at them. Because they probably weren't given much of a chance. And it's nearly just a free crack to see how you get on. It took that bit of pressure off."
The game itself was a barn-burner, a verdict which quickly spread by word of mouth. The uninvolved or casual fan who hadn't sat down to watch it beforehand was alerted via Whatsapp that he had switch this thing on.
The expected coronation of Ballygunner wouldn't come to pass as Thomas' brought their stubborn Galway mindset to the All-Ireland series, eventually winning on penalties.
"It was one of those games that you don't take any notice of when you're in the middle of it," says Burke.
"It's not until you go home or you see on social media or you watch back the next day that you realise just how good a game it was."
There had been little rhyme or reason to St Thomas' semi-final performances before then, or very little sense of continuity from one year to the next.
Between 2016-17 and 2022-23, they lost four of five All-Ireland semi-finals. Having almost pegged back - but not quite - an unassailable deficit against Ballyea in 2017, they were soundly beaten by Borris-Ileigh in 2020
Out of nowhere, they brought Ballyhale to the brink in 2022, being denied by a last-minute TJ Reid 21-metre free. In his December 2022 round of press interviews, Burke recalled how lads left the pitch "in floods of tears" that day.
They got no such kudos the following year for a surprising loss to Dunloy in Croke Park, on the same day as the World Cup final in Qatar.
Their only victory was a squeaker against Cushendall in a tempestuous game in Parnell Park in 2019, after which they were heavily beaten by Ballyhale in the All-Ireland final. For Burke, it was an especially calamitous afternoon, picking up a cruciate ligament injury which ruled him out of that year's inter-county season and delayed his championship debut by a year.
In the context of Galway's formidable strength in the club championship from the early 1990s until the mid 2010s, St Thomas' record was glaringly poor. However, Burke's answer to the question suggests that this was primarily down to the Galway SHC being their ultimate priority.
"I don't think there's any generic reason. We've no excuses. We didn't perform on some days. Probably unlucky on one or two days - the Ballyhale game, that last-minute free was a sucker to concede. Overall, it's a bit frustrating. No one sets out to have them bad days.
"We're probably lucky that the bad days came after county final successes. It'd be a lot worse if they happened in county semi-final or final."
Within Galway, rival clubs are imposing strict regimens in an effort to topple them. The Clarinbridge memorandum went viral over the winter, with the wider public left aghast at the seemingly zealous list of restrictions. TJ Brennan said last week that the list of demands came across "more sternly" on paper than intended in reality.
But for Burke, most of its prescriptions are pretty standard for a club side intent on winning silverware.
"I know it sounds wrong but I 100% see where it's coming from. I know a lot of clubs are at that level but they just didn't have it written down.
"People over-reacted massively to that piece of paper. If the public understood the things that club hurlers do nowadays and the occasions that they miss - be it weddings, parties, holidays that they're missing for club championship games. I think the club in question were just unlucky that it was their name that was associated with that piece of paper that got out.
"We would never have written it down, but lads would just do it inherently. The standard would have been set down through the years. There's no drinking or no holidays. We wouldn't do it, we wouldn't have to write it down."
He does confirm, however, that there's no embargo on golf.
"No, no, I wouldn't be much of a golfer now myself!"
