Hype levels have gone into overdrive in Cork after their blistering finish to the league.
On the Sunday Game, Anthony Daly was prepared to call it that Cork are now All-Ireland favourites, supplanting Limerick and reigning champions Clare.
The atmosphere of yearning on Leeside is nearly comparable to Liverpool at the end of 2019.
"I grew up in Cork assuming Cork's place was at the pinnacle of hurling," said the poet Theo Dorgan in 'The Game' documentary. "That was the assumption we made."
Shane Kingston's generation can hardly make the same assumption. Now aged 27, can he remember the last time Cork won the All-Ireland?
"Do I remember it? No, I don't think I do. I remember getting a photo with the cup, alright," the Cork forward tells RTÉ Sport.
"Not that I remember it, I've seen the photo! So, no, I don't remember it at all. I remember 2013, because my dad was a selector."
Eleven months after the season-rescuing Munster SHC win over Limerick, Páirc Uí Chaoimh was subject to another pitch invasion last Sunday week.
Their third double-digit margin victory in a row secured a first league title in 27 years. The last one had brought down the curtain on a barren five-year stretch for the Cork hurlers, heralding the onset of another period of success.
"There's a lot going on, there's a lot of people hyping us up," Kingston says.
"But we know ourselves that - not to undermine it - but it's a league. It's not a championship medal.
"We're going to take the learnings from the league, even from the performance at the weekend.
"Thirty-five minutes, only getting seven or eight points (in the second half). If that's the case in a championship game, you're definitely not getting results.
"There's a lot of things to work on over the next number of weeks. We're not really focused on the outside noise."
The barrage of goals they've scored has attracted particular attention. The last Cork All-Ireland winning team were comparatively goal-shy - they only scored one across the 2004 and 2005 All-Ireland finals - but the current team have been burying them at a frightening rate in the closing weeks of the league.
At the other end, they shut out opponents' goal threats entirely.
Across the last three games, Cork have conceded - cumulatively - more points than they've scored and yet have won all three matches by double-digit margins.
"We're not putting any more focus on this year than we had in previous years on goals,"says Kingston. "It's just kind of the way the games have been happening, that the opportunities are arising.
"Maybe our shot efficiency in terms of goal taking has improved or something. I'm not too sure of the statistics, but it's not something we're focused on hugely."
Kingston made his championship debut a month shy of his 19th birthday during his father Kieran's first stint as manager in 2016.
While that summer was an extremely forgettable one for Cork - which ended with a Round 2 qualifier defeat to Wexford in Thurles - they burst into life over the next couple of years, winning back-to-back Munster titles in 2017 and 2018, the latter being the first played under the round robin system.
But provincial silverware has eluded them since the age of Limerick descended.
"It's just scary to think how quickly everything has gone. When we first came in, I was like, jeez, I'm going to be here forever, and then 10 years later, you're like, god, where did the years go?
"And we kind of came into the environment where we won in '17, won in '18, the two Munsters.
"So I thought we were going to be winning a medal every year, and we haven't won anything since."
With Cork boasting astonishing depth in the forward line, Kingston has frequently fallen into the super-sub role, one with which he's familiar.
He was man of the match in the 2021 All-Ireland semi-final win over Kilkenny, despite only coming on in the 42nd minute, hitting 0-07 from play across the second half and extra-time. Even more famous, was his late dash to save Cork's season in the win over Limerick.
The integration of graduates from the All-Ireland Under-20 winning teams of the early 2020s has intensified the competition for places in attack even further.
"I suppose (Shane) Barrett was probably one of the first in 2020 and 2021.
"And then probably (Alan) Connolly came in the year after, then (Brian) Hayes kind of came in. It just happened that there was one or two of them kind of creeping in every year
"It's probably the strongest that I've been involved in, really. When you have people fighting for the first 15, fighting to make it to 26, fighting to get in there day one, really.
"It brings that kind of competitive edge to training. There's always somebody trying to get the number off your back."
Alongside the younger brigade, Cork still have Pat Horgan for another year at least, the legendary Glen Rovers corner-forward scoring 0-07 in Sunday's league decider, a month off his 37th birthday.
Horgan is probably the consensus choice for the greatest hurler never to win an All-Ireland. Whether he's still eligible for that tag by August remains to be seen.
Given that Kingston doesn't remember the mid-2000s back-to-back, does he remember Cork hurling before Pat Horgan?
"Eh, not really, no... No, look, there's plenty of fellas there around a long time.
"I suppose it's good to have that element of experience with, you know, himself (Horgan), Sham (Seamus Harnedy), Damo, (Damien Cahalane), (Conor) Lehane - probably throwing Damo into an older category there now. He mightn't be too happy with that - but it's great to have those experienced fellas in there as well, especially mixing in with the young fellas as well, the 21-22 year olds."
Watch Kilkenny v Galway in the Leinster Hurling Championship on Saturday from 3.15pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player. Follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app and listen to Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
Watch Clare v Cork in the Munster Hurling Championship on Sunday from 1.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Watch The Sunday Game from 9.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player.
Follow a live blog on all matches on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app. Listen to updates from around the country on Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
