IF MICKEY MORAN hadn’t relented, it might have felt awkward after a bit.

Conor Laverty had the microphone, Kilcoo had overturned a seven-point margin by the third quarter to get on top of Kilmacud Crokes, and the wee club from the rocky foothills of the Mournes had just beaten the city slickers to become Kings of Ireland in the middle of February.

Laverty wanted Moran up there with him and Aidan Branagan, to lift the Andy Merrigan Cup. He even announced it over the mic that it wouldn’t be lifted without him.

However, that’s anything but Moran’s style. In the teams he had worked with before, as soon as a cup was won, he took himself to a quiet corner away from the hubbub and back-slapping.

Eventually, assistant manager Conleith Gilligan found him, tucked into the far corner of the Hogan Stand. He almost had to be marched every step of the way.

Look at the picture again. He has his arms around Laverty and joint-captain Aidan Branagan. But Moran’s hands never went onto the cup. It was Kilcoo’s party. Not his.

Escorting Moran to the podium was Gilligan’s last act as assistant manager. With an All-Ireland won, that was it for Moran. He felt no desire to manage again and soon stood down.

The interesting thing is that Gilligan, along with Richard Thornton, were handed over an All-Ireland winning team. Think about how often that happens. Occasionally? Hardly ever.

The bond that Moran had with Kilcoo was similar to the effect he had with Slaughtneil. He has a talent to make connections instantly and make everyone, from the All-Star player to someone who is keeping up the numbers at training, feel good about themselves.

“I think it’s more the love that he gives off to everyone,” explains Aidan Branagan.

“It’s a funny thing to talk about that in Gaelic, but that’s the way he gets round people, he gives them affection. He’s like a grandad more so than a football manager. So, everything changes in the training camp, it becomes more family based. He gets more out of the young players, I think that’s the way he works.

“He talks about stuff you wouldn’t usually hear in Gaelic, about how much love he had for the players and for the young boys especially. It gives them a connection with him, they feel that bond.”

Since he has ‘left’, he’s never burned the bridges either. He’s been around the Kilcoo set up. He’s been on the phone to Gilligan and Thornton. He was captured in the team huddle after one Down championship game.

But Gilligan couldn’t fake that kind of relationship.

“Mickey is unique, there only is one Mickey,” he notes.

“He would just come up with things that you would never think of and he is a great story teller. It would be like parables; he would take something and relate it to a game. You can’t follow Mickey, Mickey has legendary status pretty much everywhere he goes and it is no different in Kilcoo, they have a serious bond with him. Richie Thornton and I try and be authentic and be ourselves and hope that is enough to do something.”

All the same, was he tempted to walk away at the same time?

“I suppose it was February and the league was five and half weeks from starting so, no. It was never a thing. I was happy enough, Mickey decided that it was his time to go, and I wouldn’t have went too if there was no continuity with me and Richie staying.

“It was kind of falling into that. I am very lucky to come from Ballinderry and it is a brilliant place and a brilliant community and to have somewhere else that nearly feels like home the way Kilcoo is and the people accept you when they are for you, which is just brilliant.”

Since then, Gilligan and Thornton have proved themselves their own men. In various games this year, Eugene Branagan, the AIB Club Footballer of the Year, hasn’t been able to get into the starting line-up.

Over the summer, perhaps mindful of the journey the players have been on, Cailum Doherty, Ryan Johnston and Dylan Ward all went to play football in America and came back refreshed from the experience.

But when he needed to, Gilligan timed Kilcoo’s run. Prior to facing Clonduff in the league final, they played an in-house game. Aidan Branagan had been at the pitch coaching the youngsters and was asked to fill in for the game at centre-back. That was enough to get him back onboard, and he was instantly restored to joint-captaincy along with Conor Laverty, the new Down manager.

Why bring Branagan back?

“The thing about Aidan, he is very different to any person or player that I have ever came across,” says Gilligan.

“Aidan wouldn’t have to shout, if one of the younger ones wasn’t giving enough Aidan would just give them a stare and that would be enough for the younger boys to up the ante a little bit. For what he has done around the place is just incredible and the standards he holds himself to, be it physically, the man has six young kids at home, he is an incredible person and he is a one off.”

If you go to Kilcoo’s ground, you won’t see Andy Merrigan on display. Once it did the rounds, it was put away in a discreet corner. Gilligan has repeatedly said to media that they do not see themselves as All-Ireland champions anymore.

In Kilcoo, they always have to have something to prove. They have to play with the hunger of the hunters, rather than the hunted.

It will be no different this Sunday, with the Seamus McFerran Cup up for grabs between themselves and Glen.

“Once it comes around, everything is on the table for everybody. If you start thinking to what happened last year, you lose sight of what this year is about,” adds Gilligan.

It can’t be any other way.