IN HIS SPEECH before accepting the Andy Merrigan Cup, joint-captain Conor Laverty insisted no club team had worked harder than Kilcoo this season.
Their incredible fitness levels showed in the play that led to Jerome Johnston’s All-Ireland winning goal, when a Kilcoo press forced the Kilmacud goalkeeper to clear the ball along. The rest is history.
“When it went to extra-time, I know we came very close to being beat but we trained so hard,” explained Aaron Branigan. “Mickey (Moran) has taken our training to another level.
“Every night you go to training, you know you are having no dinner (before) tonight. Eat afterwards because you know you are so well trained.
“But I find there is a psychological element to that because you know there is nobody worked any harder and that plays in your head.
“We said that in the huddle, extra time, it is what we do, it’s our time. Our training, we always finish with really hard running and knowing that there is always that wee bit left in the tank.”
Expanding on the work they’d put into the legs, coach Conelith Gilligan stated: “I would imagine we probably met and trained, from when it started up in March, maybe 150-odd times, 160 times, as a group which is a phenomenally high rate.”
During extra-time, players were cramping all over the field. Kilcoo had been dealing with a host of injures in the build-up to the game.
“Conor (Laverty), he’s been operating on a knee with no cartilage for as long as we’ve been here,” added Gilligan. “The lengths that he goes to to play isn’t healthy, it isn’t normal.”
Ryan Johnston didn’t put on a pair of boots in the two weeks before the final due to fluid in his knee and his brother Jerome “had been struggling” and was “operating on one leg”.
Ryan was withdrawn and reintroduced, as was a third brother Shealin. As it happened, all three brothers were centrally involved in the crucial goal.
“I said to Jerome, ‘Do not be going off with crampy legs’, because I know he could still get you a goal,” said Branagan. “He is a goal machine so I told him to stay up and do what he could do, because he is always good for a goal.
“When it was over, it was just madness. Tears came to me eyes straight away.
“I think it was because we were so close to being dead and buried but there is a never say die attitude with the lads. That was always our whole thing. There were times when people might have said we were beat and we pulled the whole thing back.
“You are never beat with this crew because we have done the hard work and you harder you work, the luckier you get sometimes.”
After losing in extra-time to Corofin two years earlier, this club from a rural village in south Down had achieved their ultimate ambition. All-Ireland champions on the GAA’s grandest stage.
They might hail from a small area, but Kilcoo are football obsessed. Branagan found the topic of the final impossible to avoid in the past couple of weeks.
“It’s absolutely amazing. It’s absolutely mad. I run the gym and people in Kilcoo are completely unwise, I am not joking you.
“They talk more about the football to me. Saying things like, ‘I am not going to go to class this week, just too nervous.’ Grown men telling you they hadn’t had their dinner in a few nights through nerves.
“That’s just Kilcoo, couldn’t have went anywhere but somebody wasn’t mentioning it to you.
“What’s amazing about the whole thing is, in Kilcoo if you don’t play football you are a stranger in the village.
“I think it is brilliant. I stopped drinking a while back, because I had a goal. It can give you great purpose. It keeps you on the straight and narrow, stops boys going away to Dubai to teach or England for work. For a wee small rural village you put your heart and soul into it and I think for the next generation it gives them encouragement.
“I have a wee boy, most of the boys (on the team) have wee boys, I don’t know what way it’s working, but they are all boys. This can maybe breed this on right through.”
And no man played a greater role in helping them climb that mountain than veteran manager Mickey Moran. He finally got his hands on an All-Ireland title after previous defeats in finals as manager of Mayo (2006), Slaughtneil (2015 and 2017) and Kilcoo (2020).
Moran tends to avoid the limelight these days, handing off media duties to Gilligan, and he reluctantly joined co-captains Laverty and Aidan Branagan on the Hogan Stand as they lifted the cup.
After Kilcoo trailed 0-8 to 0-2 at half-time, Moran unloaded both barrels on his team to spark a revival.
“Mickey really gave it good. Every now and again Mickey does give really cross speeches,” said Gilligan.
“He hadn’t done one of those at all this year, he hadn’t even raised his voice but this was one where he basically asked the boys to stand up and be counted or get their bags and go out onto the bus now.”
Giving an insight into the Derry great, Gilligan added: “He doesn’t want the limelight, he doesn’t want people talking about him.
“He doesn’t want to be the story. How often have you seen captains taking a manager up to lift the cup? The boys all knew what it meant to Mickey, even though it was never mentioned during the week.
“There was a sense that everybody knew what it meant to him. He gives so much and he asks for so little. Especially the older players, they just really wanted to do it for him and I know that’s a cliche but it was really true as you could see from the emotion of it at the end.”
