Paul Devlin relishing Kilcoo's second chance at Croke Park

Kilcoo's history is long and storied but it's the current generation of players who stand poised to go further than ever before.

A couple of years ago, the Down club came agonisingly close to doing just that when they just missed out on claiming a first AIB All-Ireland club football championship title.

The 18-time county champions had made the provincial breakthrough in the winter of 2019 by winning Ulster for the first time and then made it to the hallowed turf of Croke Park the following January to tackle the daunting challenge of a Corofin side chasing an unprecedented national three-in-a-row.

Paul Devlin was metronomic for Kilcoo on that 19 January 2020 day at Croker, kicking over 0-05 of their seven-point total, including the crucial levelling score deep into injury time that took the club football final to extra-time.

But that was as far as Kilcoo could take it as Corofin found a second wind in the extra-time period to seal victory.

The Down men are back at the same stage again this Saturday when Mickey Moran's side take on Kilmacud Crokes in this year's All-Ireland decider.

Devlin is hopeful that the lessons learned from the loss to Corofin can prove pivotal this time around.

"It's not too often you get second chances so quickly in terms of getting back there again but from the Corofin game, we did take a lot of positives out of it," he says.

"Obviously you have to take what you can out of the game. As a team we did learn a lot from ourselves, and from Corofin in terms of what way they went about their business, and how we can improve our game based on them. Although we lost the final, it has been a positive outcome from then to now."

He admits that last time, the Kilcoo collective were somewhat in "awe" of the situation