After Galway beat Waterford in the 2017 final, it had become accepted wisdom in hurling that no team playing with seven defenders could score enough to win the All-Ireland title.
Until Tipperary did just that last July, shackling a previously rampant Cork team that had hammered them in the league final and Munster championship, and fighting back from six points down at half-time to win by 15, 3-27 to 1-18.
Cork did have Eoin Downey sent off in the 54th minute but the Premier were already three ahead at that point.
For Davy Fitzgerald, now managing Antrim but closely associated with the much-debated tactic when over Waterford, Clare and Wexford, it was a vindication of sorts.
"I never believed this baloney of you wouldn't win All-Ireland [with a sweeper]," he told RTÉ Sport. "That's rubbish, so it is."
Fitzgerald has varied his tactics, depending on personnel and opposition, but he feels that the key to Tipperary's success, and that of his Clare team in 2013, was the element of surprise.
"Am I a manager that believes you should play a plus one all the time? No. I believe it suits a certain team.
"As a management, the one thing you hate is when something different hits you on the day and you're saying 'Okay, I've got to figure this out'.
"I played a plus one for the quarter-final and semi-final [in 2013]. The reason I didn't play it in the final was because I knew Cork would be training for it.
"I thought it was very smart of [Tipperary manager] Liam Cahill. Because it wouldn't be a popular thing to do, but when you really think about it, what he actually did was something that Cork weren't expecting.
"They never for a million years thought he was going to do that. They probably hadn't prepared for that, and if you're not expecting something, it throws you.
"Having that one person there, did it stop Tipperary's attack? No. It was just a different way of doing it."
Fitzgerald recalled that Shane Barrett's goal just before the interval had come from running at the Tipperary defence and was surprised Cork didn't try, or were unable, to repeat that approach.
"I thought Cork would win. [But] at half-time, I was looking at that scoreboard and I was thinking that isn't a true reflection of how the game was.
"If you look at the goal that Cork got, Rob Downey runs, Mark Coleman comes off his shoulder. Shane Barrett comes from the outside. So they ran the ball in.
Shane Barrett finds the net for Cork. Massive moment in the game
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"How many more times did they do that for the game? They didn't run the ball that much. I was saying to myself: 'Now they've found it'. That's one of the ways you can try and get around having a defender static.
"But it was easy for me to sit back at home and say that's how they got the goal. Maybe they hadn't the luxury of not being under that pressure to see it.
"They're in the heat of battle. Tipp are after putting a plus one out there, things aren't going the way they really want it to go.
"Maybe that was down to how tenacious Tipp were. They came up with a game plan. The team stuck to the game plan and believed in it.
"People can be critical of [now former Cork manager] Pat Ryan, but when you're under that much pressure at that particular time, it's tough.
"I hate seeing Pat Ryan gone out of Cork. I'm sure Ben [O'Connor] will do a great job. He's a good lad. But Pat Ryan was a really good fella as well."
