The sum of our parts: Tommie Gorman's Sligo Rovers love affair

In the hundreds of tributes to Tommie Gorman on social media on Tuesday, one Sligo Rovers fan noted that the last time he saw Tommie in early June, he watched him walk around The Showgrounds after a game, simply taking in the surroundings.

It may have seemed unusual, given he would know every inch of a compact and sacred ground.

It makes a little more sense now.

For those that knew him, picturing Gorman's walk stirs the painful emotions many of us try to avoid after someone's death.

It was a theme he often wrote about.

In 2014 before a Europa League qualifier for Sligo, a match programme article began with: "Love never stops. Grief reminds us that sadness and loss are never far away from love."

What does that have to do with football?

Tommie could make it so.

His storytelling and reporting was to take a complex tale and make it simple.

Name an individual within his beloved club and he would tell you their mother and father's redeeming quality. Their ancestral Sligo history.

Somehow you felt you knew a lot more.

Then he would tell you their dispositions, their dreams and why they meant so much to someone.

His reporting was to get to the heart of the matter and speak to those closest to it. When it came to Sligo Rovers, he could play both sides.

The roaming microphone in The Showgrounds was his own, whether it was welcoming legends back to the club, new signings or even raffle draws.

On a Friday where he would interview some of the most powerful figures in this country or the UK to a massive televised audience, Saturday could bring the announcement of seventh prize in the Bit O' Red Annual Draw, to see who won a voucher for the local meat supplier, all to a couple of thousand fellow devotees.

Both were passions.

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