By Arthur Sullivan
When you come from a smaller county that has had success, you know what it takes to be successful and you know that it is possible to achieve it
Aidan Rooney
"My father always said to me growing up, and it has always stuck with me, 'Why would a player in Kerry be better than a player in Leitrim?'" remembers Aidan Rooney.
"It always stuck with me, deep down. In my own head, the answer was always clear - we're not different, it's how we approach the game that's different. How we approach the idea of getting success."
The late Francie Rooney was a staunch Leitrim supporter from his early years. He watched his native county lose four Connacht finals in a row to Galway in the 1950s, so it must have been a source of immense pride to him in 1994 when his son Aidan was on the Leitrim side that famously beat Mayo to win the Connacht Championship, a day which had "many a Leitrim man looking down from the veranda of heaven", to borrow Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh's beautiful phrase.
This Sunday, Aidan Rooney is back for another Connacht final, this time as the manager of the Sligo minor football team who are looking to end a wait of 47 years for a provincial minor title when they take on Galway at Dr. Hyde Park.
Rooney learned from his father that there is no reason why a Gaelic footballer from a smaller county should automatically feel inferior to one from Kerry, Galway or Dublin. That energy no doubt propelled him towards that historic win in 1994, and towards the position he now occupies with a Sligo team that have swept all before them this season, unexpectedly winning the Connacht Minor League before beating Leitrim and Roscommon to reach the provincial final.
He inherited it from his mother's side too. His mother's brother is Mickey Kearins, the famous Sligo forward from the 1960s and 1970s who is commonly regarded as the greatest player in his county's history. Kearins is certainly not a man to eulogise what he achieved with Sligo. When interviewed last year, he made it clear that his failure to play in an All-Ireland final with his county was a major regret. Put simply, he always aimed big, even though he comes from a county that has never won an All-Ireland title at minor, U21 or senior level.
Rooney's background, and his experience with Leitrim in 1994, means he is someone who will never be calling for the introduction of a 'secondary championship', for he firmly believes that smaller counties can be successful when "the right things are done."
"When you come from a smaller county that has had success, you know what it takes to be successful and you know that it is possible to achieve it," he told GAA.ie ahead of Sunday's final.
"The drawback for us is that there is a lot of talk on the national airwaves about 'weaker counties' and secondary championships and things like that. Obviously, there are changes that can be made but at the end of the day, I don't think pundits like Joe Brolly and Colm O'Rourke are in a position to talk about counties that are actually doing a huge amount of unseen work.
"If you do the work at the bottom level, you can get there. We have done it and and we are in a Connacht final on Sunday, which we have a chance of winning. That hasn't come about by accident. That's a result of calculated plans and structures being put in place. Development squads, education on diet, conditioning programmes, working on the mental approach. So it does work.
"People say, 'oh you've a great minor team this year'. I beg to differ. I would say these lads are no better than most years, it's just that these lads have been groomed to deliver at this level and it has worked. These lads actually believe they can win and that wasn't the case before in Sligo."
Shortly after his playing career ended with Leitrim, Rooney moved to Sligo town with his wife and joined the St Mary's club. After playing with the club during the 2004 Sligo Senior Championship, he got involved in underage coaching - something he has had a fervent passion for ever since.
In 2011, current Sligo footballer Charlie Harrison approached Rooney and asked him to get involved with the newly formed U14 development squad in the county. Rooney has worked with that group of players for the past four seasons, guiding them from their early teens to the cusp of manhood, and on Sunday, their journey together reaches a pivotal stage.
"I treated this like a senior job from day one," says the Glencar-Manorhamilton native. "We started off in 2011 with 82 players on an U14 development squad, and we have 31 players on the panel at the moment. It has been a swinging door process over the years.
"When I started, we took a serious look at what other counties that had made strides at underage level had done, and we tried to mirror and duplicate that in many instances.
"We looked at Tipperary, Roscommon, Cavan, Monaghan, teams that have progressed over the last five or 10 years and we saw what they were doing. We had a bit of a realisation that if we want to achieve something in Sligo, there are things we have to do and I was willing to put in whatever time it took. And it has taken a lot of work and a lot of time."
Rooney quickly set about doing the things that he felt were needed. After Sligo played Derry and Kildare at U15 level in 2012, he noticed a marked difference in Sligo's physical prowess compared to that of their opponents, even at that tender age. So for the next two years, Sligo worked hard on their conditioning, establishing detailed programmes for all their players, aimed to take them up to the requisite levels.
Aidan Rooney during his playing days with Leitrim
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In addition to that, Rooney made use of the detailed performance and nutrition work of Sligo senior footballer Brendan Egan, a lecturer in Sport and Exercise Science at UCD's School of Public Health, Physiotherapy & Population Science. That work largely focused on educating the players about diet, and Rooney says he now has a group of extremely "self-driven, self-motivated players" who have carried out much of their own diet and conditioning work on their own.
"The players are conscientious, they know themselves what is expected, they set goals for themselves and they follow through on them," he said. "That is what has happened here. The players have taken responsibility for themselves."
From the earliest stages of his involvement with this group of players, Rooney involved the players' parents as much as possible, to create as good and "happy" an environment as possible for their sons to thrive in. His own son, Nathan, plays on the team and Rooney says that helped give him a fuller understanding of the important role families play, especially at underage level.
From the time Rooney began working with this group of players in 2011, he targeted 2015 - the year they would be in their last year as minors - as a year in which the good work they would do in the intervening period would come to fruition.
Yet, convincing people in Sligo, a county that has not achieved much in the history of Gaelic football, that tangible success could be achieved, was a big mental ask.
"My first ever conversation with these guys in July 2011 was that we were there to win the Connacht Championship and to win the All-Ireland in 2015," remembers Rooney.
"That was our target from the start. I would have said all along to the guys, in a jovial fashion, what happens when you go home in the evening after training? When Mum and Dad ask you 'what did Rooney tell youse today?' 'He's talking about winning the All-Ireland in five years time' and the automatic reaction is 'this guy is mad'.
"That was the perception but by being transparent about that being a goal, and by remembering that the other perception is not negative against you personally - it's just history - it then takes the fear factor out of it.
A Sligo player following the 1997 Connacht final defeat to Mayo
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"You have to be extraordinary, to show them that what you are doing will lead to success if you keep doing it. And this year has been huge in that regard. They have won the Connacht Minor League, they have won two big championship games, and now we are heading for a Connacht final."
Sligo won the Connacht Minor League earlier this season, the first time they have achieved that in over 30 years. While Sligo obviously have a talented selection of minor footballers available to them this year, Rooney is quick to play down the lauding of any individuals. He says the key point to remember is that "this is not a flash in the pan" and that the whole point is to establish an understanding of what Sligo need to do to compete in the long-term - not just this season.
"Winning the Connacht Championship would be the icing on the cake as we go on to the All-Ireland series, to win some more silverware," he said. "These lads have brought the level in the county up and shown what is possible, so from that point of view, this year has been an unprecedented success.
"But beyond this year, we're trying to create an environment where young lads can see the real possibility that they can have success in Gaelic football with Sligo. That's what we have done. It's tangible now.
"Now people can see, if you play for Sligo, you can play in a Connacht final, you can play in Croke Park. These lads are going to play in front of 30,000 in a Connacht final. You can't buy that kind of thing. You can't talk it, you have to walk it."
No matter what happens on Sunday, Sligo will be in the draw for the All-Ireland minor quarter-finals and still in the hunt for the All-Ireland title that Rooney targeted back in 2011. But perhaps more importantly, perceptions about football in the county will perhaps have changed. This is the first time in 61 years that both the Sligo minors and seniors have reached the provincial final, and Rooney believes it is time to change the beál bocht mindset in the county for good - the kind his father and uncle had little time for.
"I was at the Munster football final last weekend and you can feel it when you walk into the stadium in Killarney," he said. "You can feel the tradition and what it means to own it. You make your own tradition and that's what we have to do in Sligo," he said.
"John O'Mahony brought it to Leitrim as well back in 1994. He said to us, 'what's tradition only a word?' You recreate it, and you make a new one. Make a new tradition in football and in your belief in yourself. These players are going there expecting to win. They are going in expectation, not in hope."
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Connacht MFC Final: Galway v Sligo, Dr Hyde Park, Sunday, 2pm