THE Hand of Micí, they were calling it afterwards.
Which hand, though? Was it the left one that swiped the ball away from a disbelieving Craig Dias, or the right one that batted it off the line and out for a 45’?
The hands of Miceal Rooney won Kilcoo this All-Ireland every bit as much as Jerome Johnston’s left boot did.
Six points down would have become nine and the rest of the day would have been a processionary Kilmacud march to glory.
As Dias broke through and popped the ball off to Dara Mullin, the natural instinct would have been to chase the ball. But Rooney’s instincts have been retrained by years of being on the same field as Conor Laverty, either as team-mate or coach.
“We would pride ourselves on scoring goals like that,” said Rooney.
“Conor would have tortured us down the years to do stuff like that. I knew there was no point going to the man with the ball because if I was in that position, I’d probably pass it across as well.
“You just go to goal and try to cover the line. If they’d scored I probably wouldn’t have got blamed for it but look, I’ll take the plaudits for it!
“I can’t really remember it, only for seeing it on the big screen when we were walking in at the end of normal time, I was like ‘holy God, that’s a brave clearance’,” he laughed.
It’s no stretch to suggest that it may well have been the end of the All-Ireland dream for a contingent of the Kilcoo team who have moved well into their 30s.
Instead, they woke on Sunday morning smiling, and again on Monday, and yesterday, and today.
“It’s an unreal feeling, especially for those older boys in our team that played through all the leagues in Down, I’m just happy they’ve got their day in the sun today.
“Ye don’t [get many chances at this], and maybe at half-time we realised that. We knew it was gonna be very difficult. We knew two years ago it would be very difficult to get back to this situation.
“We’ve boys coming now probably towards the end of their careers, there’s young boys pushing too so the conveyor belt is good in Kilcoo, but we had to take this opportunity.
“We always said if we won the first Ulster, we could win another and another. Hopefully it’s the same with this. We might never get back here again but I’m so glad we got this day.
“I’m so happy for the supporters. Grown men crying, it just means a lot.”
Standing at the door of the Kilcoo dressing room - the lucky one that’s housed six of the last seven All-Ireland winners - Rooney laughs that he’s “like a broken record” about his training ritual in the spring of last year.
For six weeks, he, his brother Chrissy, Aaron Branagan and Ceilum Doherty trained together in Castlewellan Forest Park.
“We came together and just said we needed to do a wee bit more work.
“Every day, no word of a lie, we talked about becoming All-Ireland champions.
“That’s no disrespect to anybody in Down or Ulster, but we let it go a couple of years ago. I was probably a bit disappointed I didn’t get a chance to play that day.
“We knew we had to do a bit of work to get back to this point. Kilmacud pushed us and the way I look at it, that wee run to save that ball was six weeks of training in the Forest Park in the cold.
“It’s good to be an All-Ireland champion.”
In September and October, Rooney flew to Liverpool on a Tuesday and home on a Thursday, so that he’d miss just one session. For a while then he was on placement at home, but has been back on Merseyside in recent weeks again.
They all love Mickey Moran. As a former teacher himself who did his own training in Manchester back in the day, he would know exactly how it was.
“He’s so humble. People don’t understand that. I saw they were calling him ‘the quiet man’ and maybe that’s the best way to be sometimes.
“Mickey doesn’t like any fuss. He didn’t even wanna go up and lift the trophy. I’m so happy he’s got his All-Ireland, he’s tried for years and years, probably should have had a couple by now. I’m just so happy he got it.
“His man-management skills are unbelievable, so is this man beside me [Conleith Gilligan] and Richie. Mickey is just amazing.
“He was a teacher, I’m doing my PGCE at the minute myself in Liverpool, it was very difficult for me at times early on in the year. I was struggling a wee bit mentally with it, coming back and forward.
“It’s a very lonely time, coming to airports by yourself, not staying the weekends over there and all your mates there going out.
“But I knew the end goal was that I was gonna get to Croker. I’m so happy now I can enjoy myself!
“In September and October, I flew over on a Tuesday morning and back on a Thursday night, so I only missed a Wednesday training.
“The past two weeks, my uni lecturers have been very good to me, they let me fly a Tuesday morning and home again on a Wednesday afternoon the last two weeks so I wouldn’t miss any trainings, so I have to give them a good shout out for that.
“I’d travel the world to play Kilcoo, I love it that much.”
