I was on the move bright and early last Sunday morning, getting a train back to Dublin. I was expecting a quiet, restful trip, but the queue of people waiting to get on at Claremorris quickly dispelled that notion. They were actually waiting out on the street because the station was still under lock and key as the Westport train arrived. Thinking the train might pull away before the door to the platform opened, some of the more enterprising and youthful would-be passengers hopped the station wall. The man beside me, with a coffee and a bag of golf clubs, told me he was “too hungover to deal with this”. I trusted the process, and eventually the station door was opened, and we streamed aboard. Two Donegal jerseys got on with me in Claremorris. In Ballyhaunis, a couple of Metallica heads joined the carriage, headed for Lansdowne Road. A woman in Cork colours joined in short order. At Castlerea, four young men sat down across from me. They couldn’t have been more than 19 and were wearing check shirts, with gilets, blue jeans and brown boots. As such, I felt safe enough ruling them out as Metallica fans. They weren’t heading for Croker either, it soon became clear. But they were on a day out. So where were they off to? I heard mention of changing trains at Heuston, and in the end, curiosity got the better of me and I googled the big events happening in Ireland over the weekend. One reference to Zach Bryan in Páirc Uí Chaoimh and I had my answer. I’m no fan of country music, but I remember that feeling – youthful anticipation of a mass shared experience. As the Offaly fans hopped on in Clara and hopped off in Portarlington to wait for the train to Thurles, it became clear that this entire train journey looked like something out of an ad campaign. The sun was shining, and I felt this indefinable surge of happiness to be amid the great Irish summer. Paul Clancy scores the winning point against Armagh. Photograph: Andrew Paton/Inpho I’m not 19 any more, but I was 19 when Galway won the All-Ireland title in 2001. That summer, I worked in Fallon’s Menswear in Tuam, a clothes shop owned by John and Murt Fallon, brilliant footballers themselves but destined to be known as the older brothers of Jarlath, the 1998 Footballer of the Year. The job was great fun, but it meant working Saturdays and that meant I was in the shop listening to Galway vs Armagh in a third-round qualifier on the radio instead of being in Croker. Galway were 0-12 to 0-5 up and cruising with 15 minutes to go. Out of nowhere, a previously moribund Armagh hit seven points on the bounce, and inexplicably, the game was level going into the final minute. Then, a block-down from Michael Donnellan in the middle of the field. Donnellan pounces on the breaking ball, and solos once. He takes a second solo and as the Armagh defence closes on him he decides not to bother taking the ball into his hands at all but palms it off to Paul Clancy, coming on the loop. At this moment Donnellan is all pace, all athleticism – Clancy seems to be moving at a far more sedate speed. But he swings nonchalantly into position, defenders can get nowhere near him, and he curls over a point from 40 yards that ices the game. Economy of movement, economy of style. Clancy had been wracked with injury – that was the first action he’d seen all championship – and it was the turning-point of the year. Galway would go on to win the All-Ireland and Clancy was a star throughout. You are doomed for the rest of your life to idolise out of all proportion the first team you remember loving. And to be a teenager in Galway in the late ’90s was to have won the lottery. I didn’t miss another game that summer as Galway went all the way to their second All-Ireland in three years. If loving Donnellan and Ja and PJ was like saying your favourite Beatles were Lennon and McCartney, then Paul Clancy was George Harrison. Whenever that Galway team comes up, you know you’re talking to a proper football person when they register their admiration for Clancy. He was the hipster’s choice before we knew what a hipster was. He finished his Galway career at centre back, where his use of the ball, his vision, and his game intelligence were all on view.I ended up playing against nearly all of the men of ’98 and 2001, but I’ve written before that none of them gave me a cleaning like Paul Clancy. Playing at centre forward against Maigh Cuilinn one drab day in October, I remember him good-naturedly asking me about my journalism career, about where I had gone to college, and how Milltown were going, all while dominating me utterly – physically, tactically and technically. He won an All-Ireland club intermediate title with Maigh Cuilinn in 2008, then moved into coaching, and then into club administration, where in his four years as chairman, Maigh Cuilinn won their first two county titles and a Connacht championship. But as a player, he will be eternal. His death this week at just 49 after a year-long struggle with illness is devastating – to his family and his club primarily, and to everyone who can remember being 19 with idols to worship and their lives ahead of them.