Tipperary's All-Ireland success of 2025 can certainly be placed into the 'against the head category’.
Having won just a single game in Munster in 2023, the following season was even worse as they finished bottom of the pile and the Liam Cahill detractors were questioning his future in the Premier hotseat.
The morale-boosting All-Ireland Under-20 win over neighbours Kilkenny was a shot in the arm after an underage drought at the start of the summer, with the likes of Sam O’Farrell, Oisin O’Donoghue and Darragh McCarthy bringing a fresh enthusiasm into the senior set-up.
Yet the sense was - outside the camp at least - that it was a longer-term project, with chastening defeats to Cork in the league final and subsequently in Munster an indication that Tipp’s ultimate ambitions were not going to be realised in the following months.
To stop the Rebels in their tracks, weeks after a first championship outing at Croke Park in half a dozen years, and climb the steps of the Hogan Stand was something Forde continues to absorb.
"It's been brilliant. To get to Croke Park and then to go out and win it, it was the stuff of dreams," Jason Forde told RTÉ Sport.
"This year it was just about going back and trying to right those wrongs (2024). We got in the neck from a lot of people in Tipp. We’re a mad hurling county and people don't be shy about letting know what you haven't done so well."
Forde was instrumental in the absorbing semi-final victory over Kilkenny, his late accuracy propelling the Premier into another showdown with Cork.
Despite being outsiders in the eyes of many, it was a case of third time lucky with Pat Ryan's highly-vaunted forward unit struggling to transfer their high-scoring form onto the biggest stage.
Part of that was down to the Liam Cahill and Mikey Bevans’ tactical curveball. A fortnight after speaking to the media in the third person - "Liam Cahill never played with a sweeper on his team in his life" - Cahill duly gave Bryan O’Mara the task of being the extra defender to snuff out the space in front of the Cork attackers.
The Munster champions never got to grips with puzzle posed by Tipp, but were the players surprised with Cahill’s deviation from the script?
"I wasn't shocked, to be honest," the 31-year-old said. "A lot of the Tipperary teams I've played on since I came into the thing, I don't think we've ever kind of gone with a plus-one ourselves.
"We've found ourselves in that situation a number of times where other teams have maybe deployed a sweeper and you end up with an extra back.
"For a lot of lads, it probably wasn't anything new. Bryan O'Meara has played that role for UL for a good number of years and he's well-equipped to do it because he's such an athlete being able to cover ground and stuff.
"You saw that they [Cork] opened us up for goals in the league final and in the Munster championship, so we had to do something to try and counteract that. Byran played it superbly well. He covered off that side of the field and mopped up a lot of ball. I just think it was really clever from the lads."
It's now 12 years since the Silvermines ace made his senior championship debut with Tipp, but his importance to the team is evident by the numbers; only team-mate John McGrath, Dublin's Cian O'Sullivan and Mossy Keoghan of Kilkenny scored more from championship just gone.
Little wonder a 14th campaign is very much on the cards for the three-time All-Ireland winner.
"The age profile of the team and coming off such a high, it would be hard to kind of leave that behind, you know? Once the body is good and you're injury-free, why not stay out as long as you can? When you do close the door on it, that'll be it."
