There was a time when UL Bohemian had a vice-like grip on the Energia Women's All-Ireland League.
Between 2001 and 2018, Bohs won 13 of 17 All-Ireland League titles, including six-in-a-row between 2001 and 2007.
By their standards, the six years since the last of their record haul is something of a famine, but this weekend they have the chance to end the wait.
Standing in their way are Railway Union, the Dublin side who are threatening to do to the rest of the country what Bohs did during their dominant years in the 2000s.
Railway took the torch from the Limerick side when they defeated them in the 2019 league final, before retaining their crown in the first post-Covid final in 2022. After losing to Blackrock last year, Stephen Costelloe's side are on the hunt for three in four years.
Railway captain Niamh Byrne says her side are carrying that 2023 defeat as motivation into this Sunday's Aviva Stadium showdown, but for UL captain Chloe Pearse, getting back to the decider has been "a long time coming".
"We had a couple of tough seasons where, unfortunately, we were just beaten by better teams," Pearse says ahead of this Sunday's final.
"We haven't been in an AIL league final since 2019, I think. In that moment, you don’t think it’s going to take five years to get there again, but it did. We’re buzzing to get going on Sunday, delighted to be back to where we like to be anyway."
Had it not been for Covid, they might not have been waiting so long for title number 14.
Just like Cork Constitution who contest the men's final on Sunday, Bohs were runaway leaders at the top of the table when the entire season was cancelled in 2020 because of the pandemic.
"We were unbeaten then as well, top of the league, and then two games before the season finishes, the whole thing goes up in flames.
"It’s felt like a long five years when you look at it like that, but I suppose it has only been three years really.
"We’d have preferred to be challenging for AILs but we weren’t. Thankfully, we are back doing that now and hopefully we’ll be putting in a good shift on Sunday to try and get it back."
Pearse, who has won seven caps for Ireland, most recently in 2022, reckons she's one of just a handful of survivors in the team from their 2018 title-winning season.
While they haven't been winning titles, they've been there or thereabouts in recent seasons.
In 2022 they finished second in the regular season, only behind Railway on points difference, but missed out on the final due to the top-four round-robin playoff that followed. Last season they were knocked out in the semis by eventual champions Blackrock.
A coaching change saw Hayes return to Bohs as head coach last summer when Niamh Briggs moved on, and Pearse says he former teammate has had a big impact on and off the field.
"She came back this season; she's a great personality, as everyone will know, she absolutely loves it.
"She’s big about culture, she’s big about having fun and enjoying it, that’s a big thing for her. We have to be enjoying it and enjoying each other’s company.
"But like that, when it comes to getting the work done and playing, she wants us to play as hard as we can at the same time.
"I think we’ve just had confidence in players, you know, a lot of the team kind of stayed the same from last year. We had a good core group that would have come out of Munster, just girls getting time together, building those cohesive relationships in certain positions, and that seems to have made a difference.
"This season, we just enjoyed it, we had an absolute ball all season and I’m hoping Sunday will be the same," the 30-year-old, who can play both at prop and in the back row, added.
Sunday's final is a repeat of the All-Ireland Cup decider between the pair, which Bohs won in January, and while they also got the better of Railway in their first league meeting back in November, the Sandymount side did win impressively when they clashed in the penultimate round of the regular season at Park Avenue.
"I think from the cup final game it’s just about being resilient, we definitely lived on the edge a little bit.
"They definitely had our number in the first half but we were probably happy to go in only five points down, and then in the second half, we definitely turned up in that middle quarter of the game, showed some really good stuff, obviously got an intercept try but after that, we just kicked on.
"When people saw the product that was on... they stuck at it. Look at the crowds that were at both games this weekend..."
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"Hopefully we can do something similar at the weekend, but obviously two weeks ago they beat us and they beat us really well and in fairness to them, they were the better team.
"It just showed us what we can’t afford to happen at the weekend, especially if we let them play the game they like to play, where they offload, big ball-carriers, a very clever nine that will score and punish you if you move off that pillar.
"We just have to be really clinical in our defensive systems because otherwise they will punish us and they will score tries, they have really good players to do so.
"But, on the flip side of it, we lost, and we still scored four really good tries ourselves, so we showed what we can do as well.
"I think it’s going to be an 80-minute game; we can’t afford to switch off at any point."
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