Mayo kit-man Shane Halligan on the moment his whole independence was taken from him

No team in the history of Gaelic games is more deserving of luck than this group of Mayo footballers. What’s luck got to do with it? In kit-man Shane Halligan, they may just have their good luck charm. The double lung transplant recipient is a walking, talking miracle. “If someone said to me over a year ago that I’d be walking out with this Mayo team I’d have said they were mad.”

Forty minutes after Mayo’s victory over Tipperary last month, Joe Brolly is walking underneath the Hogan Stand back to his car when he stops to chat in front of the Mayo team bus parked outside their dressing room.

“See that lot?” he says, jabbing a thumb behind him towards the bus. “Play like that in the final and they haven’t a hope.”