YOU COULDN’T SAY that Corofin were struggling at the end of the 2012 season.

They may not have been the senior club football kings of Galway that year but they had been the champions four times in the previous six campaigns.

In their patch in north Galway, they set their ambitions higher. The goal was to emulate the heroes of 1998 that delivered the club’s first All-Ireland title on St Patrick’s Day.

Emerging triumphantly from Connacht in 2008 and 2009 was something to cherish, the subsequent All-Ireland semi-final losses to Kilmacud Crokes (2009) and St Gall’s (2010) was a source of heartbreak.

They needed something different to jolt them into the All-Ireland winning team that they wanted to become. For the first time the club looked outside of the parish to recruit a manager.

“We decided as a group within the senior panel that if we keep doing what we were doing, we weren’t going to get anything different,” says Galway and Corofin footballer Gary Sice.

“And that was no insult to the people who were helping us before. They’d been excellent in what we did but we just felt we needed a harder edge.

“Somebody from the outside to take us as footballers not as individuals that knew us personally and to treat us as such.

“We weren’t ruthless enough and we were naive enough to think that what we were doing in Connacht was going to get us over the line.”

That’s where the name of Stephen Rochford cropped up. Today he is the man tasked in Croke Park with ending Dublin’s run of supreme dominance and guiding Mayo to their moment of deliverance.

In the winter of 2012, he was a Mayo man who had won an All-Ireland club title himself at corner-back with Crossmolina and was putting together a burgeoning coaching CV.

“He was the one that kept coming up and he was sought after by a good few clubs,” recalls Sice.

“He’d done Sigerson (with GMIT) and a few bit and pieces before (around Galway), so he knew a bit about us and we knew a bit about him.

“He was exactly what we needed and he was a perfect fit. He turned out to be a genius at the end of it.”

First impressions when he fetched at their club pitch in Belclare to express his vision for Corofin football?

“He had something in his mind of how he was going to do things and we were going to do it or we were going to lump it, it was simple as that,” states Sice.

“He brought that structure to it and that discipline to it. He set a very high standard for us from day one and said ‘this is what it’s going to be like, and either you hit the bar or don’t be here’.

“It was behaviours, it was preparation, it was everything. It wasn’t something that was completely alien to us. We had done it but probably not as strategically as he was doing it with us.

“He had an air about him that you felt he knew what he was talking about which was a very helpful thing when we were doing the hard work. The other side of it too is that he came into a bunch of good footballers. We weren’t a million miles off it.”

Stephen Rochford with the Corofin footballers James Crombie / INPHO James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO

The performances on the pitch illustrated the work that was being put in. In 2013 they climbed back to the summit in Galway, despatching Salthill-Knocknacarra by 12 points.

Their Connacht hopes were foiled that November by Castlebar Mitchels in Tuam but they regrouped and responded.

The 2014 Galway senior final saw Corofin blitz St Michael’s to win after scoring five goals and they went on to deliver a consummate display that saw off Mayo’s Ballintubber in the Connacht final.

The tricky period over Christmas was negotiated and they hit the ground running in February 2015 to topple the reigning All-Ireland kingpins St Vincent’s in Tullamore.

“The preparation and attention to detail that Stephen brought to the table then was a great help,” says Sice.

“He kept us all on track. The group had matured a good bit by then and we were more focused. The Connacht final was a great thing in the past, this time it wasn’t.

“We wanted more and Stephen was able to facilitate and give us the tools we needed to go and progress.

“It was a brilliant game of football and there was no bad footballer on the field. It was great to see that we brought our potential to the table. It was a good turning point of the group.”

On St Patrick’s Day 2015, they got the All-Ireland trophy and they did it in style with a ten-point defeat of Derry’s Slaughtneil.

Gary Sice celebrates Corofin's All-Ireland final win. Cathal Noonan / INPHO Cathal Noonan / INPHO / INPHO

In the aftermath of that game, Corofin’s celebrated defender Kieran Fitzgerald – a Galway All-Ireland winner in 2001 – heaped praise upon Rochford and suggested that it would be difficult for the club to hang on to him.

“I would imagine Mayo will be looking for that guy back, sooner rather than later. Whether we can hold onto him now I have my doubts, but he has been super for us and he owes us nothing.”

As Corofin progressed to complete three-in-a-row in Galway in 2015, Sice held a similar view.

“There was rumblings in Mayo, we knew they weren’t a happy camp. With what he was doing with us and what he was getting out of us, they had to be seeing him. They couldn’t not.

“We knew very early that he was going to have to be an option for them. I was delighted to see him getting a shot at it because I knew he could bring a lot to the table for them. Now as a Galway man I wasn’t but as a friend of Stephen’s, I was. Great fit for them.”

They didn’t manage to clinch another Connacht title under Rochford’s watch, Castlebar again proving their foe in the 2015 final.

On 30 November last, Rochford’s appointment as the new Mayo boss was rubber stamped. Before Christmas, Corofin collected the Galway senior league title to mark an appropriate conclusion to Rochford’s tenure.

“It was a send off and it was nice to finish it with a win”, reveals Sice.

“It wasn’t nice to see him going but at the same time, it was time.

“The group were moving on and he was moving on and we’ve nothing but good memories of the three years he was there which is great.”

Sice’s Galway senior career hit a roadblock in 2014 but his superb club displays saw him recalled when Kevin Walsh took over in 2015. Rochford’s guidance had helped him enhance his game.

“He changed my game a good bit. I won’t say he gave me new skills but he definitely showed me how to use them better.

“I would have played the wing-forward role a certain way and he showed me another way and it was better and it was more enjoyable and it got more out of me.

“The year I was out of Galway, we won the All-Ireland club. I was definitely fresher and I was enjoying my football a lot more. I think the inter-county scene is gone, you’re in a system of play and it doesn’t allow you to do everything you want to do. I think he got the most out of me when I was back with the club.”

Last June, they were on opposite sides of the divide for the latest chapter of Galway and Mayo’s fierce rivalry.

“It’s Galway Mayo and the only thing on my mind was beating Mayo”, insists Sice.

“I got no great pleasure in beating Stephen Rochford but I got huge pleasure in beating Mayo if that makes sense.

“There was no ill feeling, I’d no sentiment, go out and beat Mayo is what you want to do and we’d been trying to do it for a while.”

That was a breakout victory for Galway but despite being crowned Connacht champions, their summer ended at the hands of Tipperary at the quarter-final stage.

Mayo have meandered past potholes on the qualifier road and are still standing. 18 months ago Rochford was manager for an All-Ireland senior club final, today is the same venue but the stage is bigger and the prize is greater.

“When I heard he was going to Mayo, I thought he could do something really big with them and he’s there now”, admits Sice.

“He will have every single thing lined up and ready that he can possibly have. If the common thought is that Dublin are going to blitz them, I don’t think so.”