History will be made on Sunday in the AIB All-Ireland senior club hurling final at Croke Park as two teams take that stage for the first time in their history.
Dublin club Na Fianna and Sarsfields of Cork will both be eyeing a maiden title.
Having fought through provincial challenges, the sides are ready to take the final step, but as Sarsfields' Jack O’Connor reveals, it’s not entirely the first time that the teams have met.
O’Connor, who will line up in the inside forward line for Sarsfields on Sunday, revealed that not only has he come up against Na Fianna as a youth player, but it was the Cork side that came out on top back then.
"I was playing in a Féile at Under-14 in 2012 and Na Fianna hosted the Féile back then," he said.
"So a lot of us had to stay with the players in their houses at the time. I was only talking to one of the other Na Fianna lads a while ago, and he was just telling me about a few of the lads who were the same age as me.
"It's kind of a cool thing really that, all these years later we're playing them in an All-Ireland club final after staying in some of their houses back then.
"We played them in a group stage. I think the first game we played them was a draw and we actually had to play them in a qualifier game to qualify out of the group.
"I think it was something like five or ten minutes a half that day, and we actually won that day and got through to the semi-final."
Sarsfields and Na Fianna have had similar routes through to Croke Park, with both sides edging out tight semi-finals by a single point.
The Cork outfit saw off a late surge from Slaughtneil for a 0-18 to 0-17 victory, while a 64th-minute winning point from AJ Murphy saw Na Fianna edge out Loughrea, winning 0-17 to 0-16.
O’Connor’s team-mates have shown their resilience throughout the campaign, bouncing back as they did from a comprehensive defeat, 1-23 to 0-17 against divisional side Imokilly in the Cork SHC final.
With Imokilly ineligible to progress to the provincial final, it was Sarsfields who carried the Rebel flag going forward.
The Cork side served notice to the country with a shock Munster final win over All-Ireland favourites Ballygunner, and having recovered from disappointment once, O’Connor is determined to make the most of their opportunity.
"The week after the county final we kind of thought that we probably left ourselves down a small bit," he said. "I didn't think we'd done ourselves justice in our performance, because, we think we're a better team than we performed on that day.
"In the days that followed, we just said, look we've got a chance here now just to kind of knuckle down. We had nothing to lose, there was no pressure on us. So we tried and get something out of it.
"Then we got the win over Feakle, and obviously we got Ballygunner and we beat them. Things kind of started rolling then."
Having got this far, there’s just one big final push required from Sarsfields and with the people of Glanmire fully behind them, O’Connor is eager to get the job done and give the town a day to remember.
"We were only training on Sunday morning and you could just see the amount of people who are out around the clubhouse, just putting up the bunting and kind of just cleaning up around the place.
"You meet people talking about the game and wishing you best luck and stuff. It's almost like the whole of Glanmire and all the community are going into it now. It's incredible the things are going to come together."
