By now, there are no surviving Connacht medalists on the Sligo panel, but there are links with 2007 nonetheless.
Noel McGuire, who was captain for that famous win over Galway, is now one of manager Tony McEntee’s selectors.
McGuire was presented with the Nestor Cup by then Connacht Council president Lauri Quinn, whose son David was an impressionable 13-year-old at the time. Sixteen years on, he’s a Sligo player.
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“I remember meeting Dad just before he presented Noel with the cup and you could see he was emotional, you could see it in his eyes,” he recalls.
“Whatever age I was, 13 back then, it was a kind of strange thing to see and from that moment on I realised, ‘Jeaney Mack, this means so much to so many people’.
“Like, I get to do what I want to do, I get to play for Sligo and I have that but what I identify with is the people that we are representing, the family or clubs.
“I would not be here today if it was not for Shamrock Gaels club, if it wasn’t for my family and all my extended family, my cousins, uncles, the whole lot. It’s just representing them so I am just very excited at this prospect of playing in a Connacht final.”
Now 29, Quinn didn’t get the call to join the county panel until he was 25 and had effectively written off the prospect at that stage.
“I probably thought that was gone and I will be forever grateful to Paul Taylor for calling me into the panel, giving me that opportunity.
“I was actually in my local national school before the [Division Four] League final and I said, ‘I dreamed of playing for Sligo like some people dream to be an astronaut and I am actually getting to live that dream’.
“I am so lucky but, 25 coming in, there is not too many guys doing that in inter-county squads now, so very lucky to get the chance.”
It’s only this year that Sligo have started to make notable progress with promotion and a Connacht final appearance, and the 2020 season particularly difficult as a Covid-19 outbreak saw them forfeit their Connacht semi-final against Galway.
“It was only then afterwards when you saw the Tyrone situation, should we have taken more of a stand as a county?” Quinn wonders. “Probably, yes.
“That is something that Tony McEntee has brought in to this group, Tony is just a born winner, he has won all his life with Crossmaglen and Armagh.
“I won’t say it’s an arrogance, but it’s an inner belief he has and that’s rubbing off on us in that we are not going to take a backwards step from any situation or any team, we are going to face everything front on. That’s not to say that the county board did not try their best.
“If that happened now, there is no way we would go as quietly as maybe we did back then.”
With the recent underage success, Quinn can see a pathway to a Connacht title, even if tomorrow may be too soon for that.
“I tell a lot of these guys that Sligo are going to win a Connacht title if the provincials remain there in the coming years. Will I be around to see it? Maybe not but I keep telling them they are going to be around to see it.
“I hear all the negative stuff about the structures and all that but there are far more positives in terms of us as players getting to play a Galway, who rightly see themselves as an All-Ireland contender.
“And if you’re not good enough, at least you know where the top teams are at and where you need to get to.”
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