Mick Bohan hadn't envisioned being back here so soon. Certainly not after last year's shock defeat to Donegal in the All-Ireland quarter-final.
But here the Dubs are again, preparing for another All-Ireland final, having, much like the men, experienced two fallow years in 2021 and 2022.
After six years in charge and six All-Ireland finals, exiting after a last-eight game in Carrick-on-Shannon wasn't what Bohan was used to and was almost too much to bear in the aftermath.
"Driving away from that game, I was gone. Definitely," Bohan says of the quarter-final exit last year.
"But sport is funny. I can't even tell you at this point in time what turned it around. I do know as a management team that we felt we let ourselves down that day."
In the aftermath, a number of stars from the four-in-a-row, including Sinead Goldrick, Ciara Trant and Lyndsey Davey - all did step away from squad and it appeared that a transitional phase beckoned.
However, from that low point, they've developed a new-ish team, a blend of old and new. They endured a couple of heavy losses in the league in Tralee and Tuam, as well a championship group phase loss to Kerry in Parnell Park.
They avenged the 2022 loss with a hammering of Donegal in the quarters and then booked their spot in the decider with a blistering attacking display against Cork in Thurles.
Oddly, it was the loss to this week's opponents in Donnycarney that convinced Bohan that the team was developing much quicker than anticipated.
"This year, I would have said to ye at the start of the year that our whole modus operandi was to make this thing competitive again.
"If you'd asked me last November or December were we going to be in this position, I'd have said no. It was just too much all in one go. So that in itself, being here, is an achievement.
"I think probably the Kerry game at Parnell Park where we felt that if we could get a couple of things right then we could be a lot more competitive than we were.
"That probably was the day...we went seven points down and showed huge character to come back into it. On another day, a couple of things could have gone our way that might have changed it.
"So we'd had some really tough days throughout the course of the year but that day we showed superb character."
In the process, Bohan was adamant they stuck to their football principles. In 2021 and 2022, they were suckered against two highly defensive outfits - Meath and Donegal. While Bohan is careful not to deride the approach of any other county, he didn't want the Dubs to go that route.
"We haven't changed hugely. We’ve got better at unlocking that system, we’ve become more patient while in 2021 we headed into it and got lost in the numerical advantage that they had.
"But you equally have to know, what way do you want to play the game? Do you genuinely… like, there’s a style of play that I have no interest in and will never have an interest in playing or will never have any of my teams playing.
"So you’ve to be true to your own values. And that’s not dismissing the way Donegal or Meath play. They’ve found the system that works for them and that’s what you’re supposed to do. But you are equally supposed to be true to your own values and I think we’ve done that."
While the men's renaissance was primarily attributed to the recall of some distinguished elders from the 2010s era, the women's team has moved on, younger players being drafted in, while some more experienced players assumed leadership roles.
"During the National League you're trying an awful lot of different things out, you're trying different personnel, you're trying to see when you're in trouble like we were in the Cork game - we had started poorly but then we had turned it around - you're seeing the people who want to battle.
"The people who want to go to war in those moments. So girls like Niamh Crowley - I'm thinking of some of the younger kids - she's come straight out of minor last year and she's probably at a stage where she's been one of the best corner-backs we've had in any of the seven years.
"Niamh Donlon only found her wings after a challenge game against Mayo five or six weeks ago and she's been superb.
"We've been terribly lucky over the years that we've had some fantastic leaders but that secondary group, the Carlas [Rowe], and Leahs [Caffrey] and Jen Dunnes, they were never put in this position before and there was no other way out, they'd have to either face it down and become leaders and take this thing by the scruff of the neck or fall."
While a number of decorated players did depart, Bohan did manage to retain Sinead Aherne, now 37 and a veteran of Dublin's first All-Ireland title win back in 2010, albeit only after a sustained campaign of persuasion.
"It was much more than a phone call with Sinéad. There were several meetings. The type of person she is, it was not an easy decision for her. And even when she came back in, her whole concern was about not undermining Carla and Leah and the new leadership group that had taken over.
"That's just typical of what she's about. But she's been huge. Even from the point of view of confidence around the group, just having her in the dressing room, just the small words with some of the kids, she's been fantastic.
"We were trying to get her back just to help us to coach the younger kids, which she has been fantastic in doing. But, as we knew, she has such a fantastic football brain. She has obviously now put herself in a position where she's one of the crew who will take part on Sunday."
Two-time All-Ireland winner Jennifer Dunne, in particular, has emerged as a star of the campaign, with a superb display in the Leinster final and a four-point haul from midfield in the semi-final against Cork.
As soon as the summer finishes, she's Australia bound like many others, having signed a contract with the Brisbane Lions last March.
"Her mother was wishing for us to be successful for a different reason because every time she won she was guaranteed another fortnight at home," says Bohan.
"Yeah, she's away whenever (it's over), I presume in 10 days time or something like that."
The AFLW has been the bane of inter-county managers here - All-Ireland winning Meath boss Eamonn Murray famously labelled it "dreadful stuff" and being devoid of skill in a rant last year - and Bohan fears the current scenario whereby players are juggling both across the year (as Dunne still intends to) may not persist as the Australian code grows.
"If you remember at the start of all of this, Cora [Staunton] was obviously the first player and it was hugely promoted, from here never mind from overseas, and ever since I'd say they [LGFA] have been disappointed they did that because it became a very popular thing to do.
"Now, it's a twofold story, the girls want to travel as a lot of our youth do. It’s very hard to stop them. This does give them an opportunity to travel yet have a part-time job or an income or a place to stay, and it does give them an opportunity to go over to the other side of the world and you cannot stop them doing that.
"However, if it increases, as it seems to be, and the seasons are becoming definitely more demanding and as the finances increase they are going to put higher demands on them.
"So for us to lose our top athletes and players, it’s obviously not good for the game.
"Mayo are probably the county who got hit most, I think they have five players out there and I certainly know we wouldn’t be able to withstand that. In our situation, obviously Goldie [Sinead Goldrick] went out, Lauren Magee went out for a season, Niamh McEvoy, and now we have Jen. But if there was a flood of three or four at any one time it would be very difficult."
The much publicised issues with the treatment of female inter-county players - which led to concerted protest this season - are a factor in the exodus, reckons Bohan. Like most involved in the female code, he expressed the hope that amalgamation with the GAA happens fast.
"You don't see a drain in the lads, you just don’t see it. Why? Because in most cases they are getting looked after particularly well. Now I do think that has changed in the women’s game, and I do think the attention that has been brought to it this summer has been good.
"But it’s a twinned approach, it’s not just the LGFA, the GAA have to want this as well and have to row in behind it.
"The LGFA, I know it's a different organisation and I know it’s a different set of management but when I go to my club my kids play the game, whether they are a boy or a girl. I don’t see them, nor do they identify as LGFA or GAA. They identify themselves as Gaelic footballers or camogie players or hurlers, they don’t distinguish that.
"That for me is how we get to a situation of not having to stand up on the day of an All-Ireland final thanking Croke Park profusely for allowing us into the stadium."
That's for further down the line. On Sunday, Dublin's women have a chance of delivering another double to the capital, following the lads in ending a three-year gap.
Bohan plays down the parallels with the men's team, noting that family ties are the only real linkage.
"Right throughout, since 2017, we've been twinned with the lads. But one doesn't have an influence on the other.
"Over the years, Jack McCaffrey's sister Sarah played with us. Paul Flynn's now wife Fiona Hudson played with us. At the moment, Leah Caffrey is John Caffrey's daughter as I'm sure you well know - he won an All-Ireland in '83. Lauren Magee, daughter of Johnny.
"That's the only parallel, that this group came from real Gaelic families. So that means so much. Obviously representation is huge in all of those households, but realistically what happens with the lads and what happens with ourselves doesn't really have much of a correlation."
