Last year three Corofin players lined up for Galway in their All-Ireland senior football final showdown with Kerry.
The three - Kieran Molloy (26), Liam Silke (27) and Dylan McHugh (25) - are all around the same age and have been close friends since day one.
They each played a huge part in Corofin's time of superiority in the All-Ireland senior club series
Both Molloy and Silke started all the finals in their historic three-in-a-row success in 2018, '19 and '20.
McHugh started the 2019 decider and came off the bench in the 2018 and 2020 finals.
It was tough for him to see his friends not start the 2023 season in either a gold and green or maroon shirt. Molloy sustained an ACL injury - though he is recovering rapidly - while Silke decided to go travelling.
"As clubmates you would miss the two lads," McHugh told RTÉ Sport at the announcement of a five-year extension of AIB’s sponsorships of the GAA All-Ireland Football Championship, AIB Club Championships and AIB Camogie All-Ireland Club Championships.
"You’d miss them both with club and county. From a Galway point of view they are serious operators and I suppose people from the outside might have wondered if they would be replaced.
"But younger lads on the panel have stepped up this year, got game time and done well and they may not have had that if the two lads were around."
"There was something to show for the year at least and something to come back and fight for again."
McHugh said that losing last year's All-Ireland SFC final to Kerry hurt a lot, but he added that they had to respond.
"You could see what it meant to people," he said.
"There were more flags around, there were more good luck texts and more talk about it.
"We tried to treat is as any other match. To lose was tough but as the weeks afterwards went on you looked back and saw that we had won a Connacht final and gained promotion to Division 1. There was something to show for the year at least and something to come back and fight for again."
They will take on Sligo on Sunday to try to retain their crown.
It’s a Galway side that looks to have grown stronger by the week in 2023.
For his own part, McHugh says that his manager Padraic Joyce simply wants him to go out and trust himself.
"He wants us to express ourselves, to go out and play football.
"For me on the wing that might mean making an extra run or trying for that score. He trusts us to do that."
With compact defences ahead of him to break down and one behind him to be a key part of, McHugh is constantly on his toes anyway.
He enjoys the challenge of trying to pierce an opponent’s armour, once he is safe in the knowledge that the space behind him is being marshalled too.
"After a few games friends and family might have remarked that it was boring to watch," he smiles.
"But I wouldn’t see it like that. For me, it’s about the challenge of breaking down the opposition and trying to get that pocket of space."
Sunday’s final comes after a hard battle with Roscommon in the semis. But McHugh is well used to the heat of the front line. He has been one of the most consistent performers on the Galway club scene in recent years and has really established himself in the Corofin defence.
A Corofin wing-back is a stylish one but he brings lots of energy up and down the field too.
The games are coming thick and fast for them now but in typical fashion McHugh is unfazed.
"We’ll look no further than Sunday," he says.
"Sligo are really going well but we will look after ourselves and we can deal with whatever is next after that game."
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Watch the Connacht and Munster Football Championships finals, Galway v Sligo and Kerry v Clare, from 1.15pm on Sunday from 1.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on the RTÉ News app or RTÉ.ie/Sport or listen to live commentary on Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1
