The Ulster Senior Club Football Championship title is the precious piece of silverware yet to cross the threshold in Kilcoo.
The rural south Down village has produced a team that has stuck to its core values over the years.
They have forged together through the good times and the bad.
Former Slaughtneil and Derry manager Mickey Moran was brought in to replace the successful Paul McIver, who teamed up with the astute, young Conleith Gilligan.
While Moran has guided his previous team to Ulster success with his shrewd tactics, it is Gilligan who last won the Ulster Championship as the Derry star player on that breakthrough Ballinderry team in 2001, which went on to win the All-Ireland the following March.
He also knows what it takes to win silverware at the top level, with four Derry senior club championship winning medals as well as two National League winning medals with Derry, in 2000 and 2008, and he admitted that despite the over two-hours’ drive from Derry to south Down, the chance to work alongside the legend Mickey Moran was too good an opportunity to turn down.
“When Mickey asked me to go with him in, it was an opportunity for me to learn from someone that has done it at every level and working with Mickey has been incredible and Kilcoo are a great club,” Gilligan said.
“So I didn't have a real target or ambition as such, but I did want to learn as much as a can and do as well as I can and try an add something and give something back.
“So far it has worked out well and the opportunity to work alongside Mickey is not something you are going to be offered anywhere, so when Mickey asked me it didn't take too long to decide and it is a decision I don't regret.
“I am really enjoying it and it is a fair bit of travelling up and down and you are away a lot but when the boys give you everything you have, it is very satisfying going home knowing that they have really put in a shift every night you go there. It has been tough but it has been really rewarding.”
Kilcoo have been the Down team of the decade with eight county titles over the last 10 years, but thus far the Ulster title has been the one that has got away.
Burren were the last Down club to win the Ulster Club Championship and that was back in 1988.
Still those battles in Ulster over recent years should count for something, especially given that Sunday's opponents Magherafelt have only won their first Oak Leaf County senior title in 45 years.
However, both Moran and Gilligan are acutely aware of the threat Derry champions pose in the quarter-finals on Sunday.
“It has been something that has eluded Down teams for a long time and a lot have tried and it is on the horizon,” said Gilligan.
“I suppose we would know a bit more about them than some of the other teams because they are from our locality but within that it takes on a life of its own, because it is a completely different competition.
“Once you get out of your county championship you enter the Ulster sphere and from my own experience it really is about taking one game at a time.
“Derry champions tend to have a very good record regardless what team has come out of it, right from the 1980s, any team that has come out has given it a real good go and I don't expect this year to be any different.
“They will have to look at it as a huge opportunity too because they are a very young team and the pressure is off them now and they can just give it a real go.
“Some people feel it is an advantage to have played in Ulster, but I know from our own experience in Ballinderry and what Slaughtneil done in Derry and what The Loup did - because a lot of teams came out of Derry and won Ulster in their first go and really the pressure comes off you and that can be an advantage in many senses.
“It is a great competition and probably the premier competition in Ireland, it is so well supported and something cherished by all the players, just to get into the competition and to pit yourself against the best and it will be no different for both Magherafelt or Kilcoo.”
Losing their county crown last year hit the players hard, Ulster was their goal but Burren scuppered those plans.
That's why winning the Frank O'Hare Cup back this year meant so much to the Magpies, they had felt that they were being written off after 2018, but the county final win over Warrenpoint lay down the marker that there is plenty of life left in this team that seem to thrive under a siege mentality.
“I suppose there was a feeling that because Kilcoo had so many players in their mid to late 30s whenever they lost the title last year to Burren, that that was that team gone and that five or six players would retire,” Gilligan said.
“And that hasn't happened and to regain the Down title was one of the big things. Sean O'Hanlon played this year in the Championship at 39-years-of age and there's not many players doing that although Gerald McEvoy also played at 38-years of age.
“So I suppose given the age profile of the Kilcoo players that lost the county title, they might have retired and went away but they are quite a resilient bunch and their enthusiasms and appetite for football is incredible and between that and the younger boys there is a real good mix, especially in training and it is just a pleasure to be around them.”
Gilligan’s enthusiasm for the game is infectious and there is no doubt that he will go far in management but his immediate focus is on helping the Magpies find their wings in Ulster on Sunday.
