It's been another relentlessly shite year for Cork hurling - one of the worst in the Rebel County's history.
The fact remains that the current crop are not good enough to hang tough with the counties who have taken to their stead as chief challengers to Kilkenny. The false dawn of 2013 has been left firmly in the rear-view.
It's now been 11 years since Cork were last a genuine hurling superpower, winning three All-Irelands between 1999 and 2005. A key figure in those two supremely talented squad cycles was none other than one of the O'Sullivans from Cloyne; a man who made his Championship debut in 1997 at the age of 19 and was almost immediately christened 'The Rock', such was his sheer size, bear-like strength and physical indestructability.
Diarmuid O'Sullivan went on to become one of Cork's greatest ever inter-county hurlers, winning four All-Stars and six Munster titles (one as a footballer) as well as his three All-Irelands. More importantly, though, he patented the borderline violent shoulder charge, as is beautifully depicted in the below video tribute.
Set to the dreadfully 2005 'street-fight-compilation-on-your-phone' cliché tune of Eminem's 'Till I Collapse', and composed by the brilliant Maurice Walsh - a Kilkenny man, incidentally - this is the two-minute tribute to Diarmuid O'Sullivan that the world has positively been crying out for since his retirement in 2009.
Go on Sully boy! You simply couldn't knock The Rock.
