INDULGE my over-the-top love for The Office for a moment. The wonderfully chaotic worlds of David Brent and Michael Scott – whether you're drawn to the UK or US versions, or, like me, both – offer perfect escapism from adulthood, turning those ordinary lives into something more relatable than you first think.

Between the laughs were moments of familiarity, and lessons that transcend from Slough and Scranton into our lives. One line, in particular, has stayed with me.

‘I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days, before you've actually left them,’ mused Andy Bernard in the US finale – and it’s a line that resonates far beyond Dunder Mifflin.

Chatting to Kilbrittain boss Joe Ryan ahead of Saturday’s All-Ireland club junior hurling final, he mentioned how that same quote was brought up earlier in the Carbery club’s run to glory – and you can understand why.

This is Kilbrittain’s greatest season. County champions and kings of Munster, this band of trailblazers have gone further than any other team from the club ever has, scaled new heights, brought their community closer together on a journey that will become the stuff of local legend.

Kilbrittain are living their ‘good old days’ right now, and that realisation marks this campaign as extraordinary.

As Tom Lyons explains elsewhere in this preview, Kilbrittain hurling club was founded in 1904, and the club is also one of the five founding members of the South West Board (Carbery) in 1925. The Black and Amber are one of the cornerstones of Carbery GAA, have enjoyed some incredible days – winning the county intermediate hurling championship in 1995, and moving up to the senior ranks – but this current odyssey tops the lot.

‘We’re not just making memories, we’re rewriting history,’ stalwart David Desmond told our 2025 Sports Review, reflecting on their county and Munster triumphs that have since moved up a notch by qualifying for the All-Ireland final.

Kilbrittain are the first Carbery hurling team to ever win an official Munster GAA championship. These are the good old days right now, and the realisation of that now, rather than years down the road, makes this even more special.

‘I was speaking to the lads about this – we say this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but it’s not really. There are so many great lifetimes that don’t get this chance,’ captain Philip Wall says. He’s right. This Kilbrittain team has reached a height that no hurling team ever has before, or maybe will again. Look at O’Donovan Rossa’s men’s footballers’ All-Ireland senior club football final triumph in 1993 – the Skibb men are still the only West Cork team to lift that title. A local team might never summit that mountain again.

But a season like that can define a career, or bind a band of brothers together for life, like it will with the Kilbrittain hurlers regardless of the result this weekend. There will be reunions down the line where stories will be relived and memories shared, but Andy Bernard’s wistful line is urging us to pause, however briefly, and appreciate the now before it moves on.

It’s these memories that last, and as you grow older you learn it’s the memories that really count. Like memories made with your family that your kids will carry with them long after we’re gone.

For Kilbrittain hurlers, they have rich pickings from this campaign – final triumphs, homecoming celebrations, different moments in matches that resonate for personal reasons, even the novelty of a team Secret Santa.

‘I got a hat and a pair of socks from vice captain Colm Sheehan,’ Philip Wall laughs.

‘The presents varied a lot – some lads got very good presents, but another lad got a set of pancakes!

‘It depended on who you got – you wanted Tommy Harrington, he was the man to get, the most thoughtful!’

Right now, Kilbrittain have a job to do: beat Easkey on Saturday. But this is it – these are the good old days. Embrace them, enjoy them, because life never stands still.