Aaron Branagan tells a tale of wildly contrasting bus journeys. Kilcoo have been in each of the last two AIB All-Ireland club finals, both of which went to extra time.
They lost to Corofin in 2020 as the Galway powerhouse completed a historic three-in-a-row and, afterwards, Branagan and his teammates trudged out of the dressing room and into the concourse under the Hogan Stand after the game, dreading the longest journey home.
“I remember sitting on the bus after the match was over and it was the worst feeling I ever had in my stomach,” he recalls. “And I remember looking at the Corofin boys - I hope they don’t mind me saying, there was a few of them having a cigarette and I was thinking, ‘Jeepers I didn’t even put butter on bread for the last two weeks never mind not taking a cigarette’, but we got there.
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“Daryl (his brother) says we will get back, we just have to keep putting our heads down and then when you get that it’s the best feeling in the world.”
That came last February, as they squeezed Kilmacud Crokes out with a dramatic winning goal late on. This time, the coach trip up north couldn’t last long enough.
“A lot of people had said that we scraped it, or we stole it on them. It was probably our worst performance all year and we still got over the line. We just kept digging.
“The harder you work, sometimes the luckier you get.
“And whenever you come back and win those, when people say you are dead and buried, that feels even better because there was a time in your head when you were thinking is this even possible?
“And I even remember when we got on the bus at the end, I hadn’t drank in years at this stage and I had a drink and I remember just looking about the bus at everyone’s faces and I remember thinking this is the best day of everybody’s life in here and everybody was feeling ecstatic.
“I wish that bus journey could have went on for hours and hours because it was untouched. It was just the lads that had played.
“Just the lads that had trained. It wasn’t diluted by fans. Not that it was going to be diluted, it was just the boys - it was genuinely the best hour and a half drive of my life.”
For Branagan to afford such lofty standing to a sporting achievement may be perplexing to some, particularly in the context of his having become a father to a boy, Leo, the previous month.
But he rationalises it in the following manner: “I don’t really know if I can say this. I had this conversation with my partner Mairead and we were saying, you know about stuff, and we were talking about babies and stuff like that.
“I said, the feeling after the whistle blew, it’s a feeling you can never, ever replicate, you know what I mean?
“And I said you can have a few babies, you can’t have a few All-Irelands a lot of these times.
“So it was definitely a feeling I had never felt before when that final whistle went.
“It’s an emotion if you could bottle and sell it, it would be the most addictive drug in the world.
“For a month I was six feet tall, the happiest man in the world, but as time goes on you do get that hunger again, ‘Do you know what? It would be nice to get another one of them.’
“You think back to these other teams and the hunger just starts to come back on you.
“I remember people saying, ‘If I ever won the All-Ireland, it started in our house that if we ever won a Down Championship I remember Aidan (another brother) saying that he would retire.
“Then it’s if you ever win an All-Ireland, but the boys all stayed on so that meant that the hunger was still there.”
They’re back in the Ulster final this Sunday, against Glen, bidding to become just the third club, after Crossmaglen Rangers and Clan na Gael, to complete the three-in-a-row. But Branagan won’t be putting his head down beside Mairead on Saturday night.
"I used to be going to matches in years gone by - this is pre Leo - and everything has to be dead straight.
“I remember saying to Aidan after looking at my sleep score in my phone, 'I slept seven hours and only three was deep sleep'. Aidan was like, 'Aaron, I haven't slept in three years!' He had five or six (children) at this stage.
"The night before big matches, normally I'm allowed to go back to mummy's. But it's getting harder and harder to get away with it now. It's not so much Mairead; Daryl and Eugene (yet another brother) give me more abuse than anyone.
"I definitely get a nicer sleep. Mummy has us boys at the house spoiled so you come down and your breakfast is sitting ready for you. It's a luxury we're not really getting in this last year."
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