You can't play matches from three years ago

Ballygunner have been such a perennial contender in the latter stages of the club championship that it's mildly surprising to recall that this is only their second All-Ireland final appearance.

In the past decade, watching the black and red jerseys buzz around Thurles or the Gaelic Grounds on a dark Sunday afternoon on TG4 has become a staple of mid-winter.

The city club have established total dominance over the previously competitive Waterford championship, such that their rivals may be in danger of losing heart.

The latest county final win, in which they racked up 2-35 against Austin Gleeson's Mount Sion, was their 12th on the trot.

Of those 12 county deciders, only four were won by single-digit margins, and the most recent of those, in 2021 and 2019, were both nine-point games.

Their narrowest final victory across the entire spell was a four-point victory over Tallow in 2015.

Outside the county, they've been the bane of the Limerick SHC winners, eliminating them seven years in a row - ironic given the compexion of the county game in that time - a run which continued against Na Piarsaigh late last year.

This season brought a sixth Munster SHC crown overall and a fifth of the present era.

Since Harry Ruddle lashed home the famous last-gasp winning goal to win their first and only All-Ireland title in 2022, they've usually been installed as All-Ireland favourites before the starting gun is fired on the provincial club championships.

Through one thing and another, they've tended to get tripped up along the way.

Ballyhale Shamrocks gained revenge against them in the 2022-23 All-Ireland semi-final - a match which may have suffered in the public memory due to clashing with the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar.

The 2023-24 campaign, when they looked at their most imperious with Ballyhale out of the equation, was derailed by a penalty shootout loss to St Thomas'.

Last year, they were caught cold in the Munster decider by Sarsfields while the general election count was still ongoing.

A narrative may be growing that one All-Ireland title may be selling this generation of players short. They get another chance to add to that this weekend.

"That hasn't been discussed within this group anyways," Pauric Mahony tells RTÉ Sport. "It might be an outside perception.

"Maybe people in Ballygunner might say that. But for us [within the team] it's about maximising every game we play.

"We can't go back and play games that have happened two or three years ago. We have a game this weekend, that's what our focus is on.

"Maybe in time, we might look back and say, 'Jesus, we over-achieved or we under-achieved'"

"It's not about 'have you won one All-Ireland or two All-Irelands or 10 All-Irelands', it's the All-Ireland that's in front of you.

"Maybe in time, we might look back and say, 'Jesus, we over-achieved or we under-achieved'. But while we're still playing, it's about the future and what's ahead of us."

After the jolt of the Munster title defeat last year, they look especially tuned in for 2025-26, from the cricket score in the Waterford final, to the ease with which they ran roughshod over Eire Óg in the Munster final.

The semi-final against St Martin's looked dicey at half-time until Ballygunner cranked up the pace in the second half.

One of the more novel dimensions this year is Jason Ryan's involvement as manager.

Club finals day in 2026 will see a two-time All-Ireland winning hurler Anthony Cunningham in the manager's bib for the football final, while Ryan, a former Waterford inter-county footballer, will be calling the shots for one of the hurling finalists.

Ryan's most celebrated achievement as a manager is guiding the Wexford footballers to the 2008 All-Ireland semi-finals, and has previously coached soccer in California. In latter years, he's migrated over to hurling, as a selector with Wexford.

"Number one, Jason has obviously got good people around him and he assembled a strong management team," says Mahony.

"Jason's obviously a very good coach himself and does a lot of the coaching with us as well.

"The different codes, Jason’s background is hurling, soccer and Gaelic football and bringing new ideas and employing them to different types of drills in training has probably brought a bit of freshness to the whole thing as well.

"It's the two or three % of a tweak to what we’ve been doing for the last number of years. The small subtle changes really that’s impacted."

Regarding the broader trends behind their current dominance in Waterford, former player and current selector Fergal Hartley recently dismissed the notion that it was primarily down to the spike in population in the area, insisting that it was primarily down to tradition.

"If you look at the age dynamic of the time, there's probably three or four different groups of ages," says Mahony.

"Philip [Mahony], Stephen O'Keeffe, Barry Coughlan, Ian Kenny, we're all the same age group and we're all good friends with each other and there's that competitiveness that's been there since we were children.

"Then there's a couple of other similar type groups. Kevin [Mahony], Ronan Power, Paddy Leavey, these lads are all the same age group.

"If you've two or three age groups like that consolidating into the one group, you probably just have a good environment. And that's what we've played off in the last five, ten years.

"We're well aware that it's not going to go on forever so we're trying to make the most of it now."

Mahony, a three-time All-Star and a 2017 All-Ireland finalist, retired from the inter-county scene at the end of the 2023 campaign.

He says: "I suppose your calendar of season turns from 12 months to seven months. The winter training that everyone dreads, you miss all that because January, February and March is down-time.

"By the time you do get back at it each year, the weather is getting nicer and the evenings are getting longer. It makes it easier. I've definitely enjoyed it the last couple of years."

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