County success cherished all the more fervently for its scarcity

In his brilliant book, Memoir, John McGahern wrote of growing up in Leitrim and of how, in rural communities, “the local and the individual were more powerful than any national identity”.

Football was intrinsic to that identity, to a sense of the local, and to the life of a young boy growing up in the county. McGahern recalled an autumn day from his childhood: “I had watched enviously from the bank as the older boys played football, and my dream was to learn to play.”