Tipperary came into the 2011 All-Ireland final looking in menacing form. They had ripped through the Munster championship. That included putting seven goals past Waterford in the final.
Dublin were defeated in the semi-final with Kilkenny the opponents in the All-Ireland decider. It was a daunting task if Tipp were going to retain Liam MacCarthy for the first time since the 1960s.
That was made all the tougher by what looking back now appears to be a not totally unexpected change in circumstances prior to throw-in: it started to rain.
"The day of the All-Ireland final, I remember sitting down in the warm-up room. I was halfway through my ritual when someone said to me, 'The floodlights are on outside lads' and it caused chaos in the dressing room," said Brendan Cummins at Balls.ie's All-Ireland final preview in association with Centra.
Me, I went, 'I've never played the All-Ireland final under floodlights. This wasn't in my visualisations last night when I was thinking about catching a ball'. You'd be locked up for it in a padded room when you think about it.
All this is going through my head. Meanwhile, beside me, [lads are saying] 'Are we supposed to wear wet gear going out or are we going out in our jerseys?' Players are starting to ask what are we wearing going out, you'd swear it was a disco we were going to.
It's funny now, at the time I had to go into the toilets for a couple of minutes, take a breath and reset and refocus. At this stage, there was wet gear going in every direction.
We go out onto the pitch, our warm-up was an absolute disaster, a car crash. I got hit with sliotars that shouldn't be coming in; there was a pucking in drill going on while I was doing my warm-up it - it was desperate stuff.
Cummins said that the smallest of changes can throw you off on the big day. Though, that was not the case for Kilkenny, who eventually won the game by four points.
"In contrast up the other end of the pitch, the Kilkenny players came out in nearly their underwear; they didn't care if it was raining, snowing - not a damn. They had Kilkenny jerseys on, no wet gear; just out onto the field, 'I'm going to win an All-Ireland'.
"It's funny now but back then I nearly had a heart attack. It took me 10 or 15 minutes to get my act together. Henry [Shefflin] blocked me down trying to clear a ball, I never even saw him coming. When I threw it up, I thought, 'This is grand now' and next thing [Henry comes running in] out of nowhere on the hard ground of Croke Park and I thought, 'Oh no' and he just broke it out."
You can watch Brendan Cummins speaking about the 2011 All-Ireland final below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw9gga6fgEo
