AARON Branagan does a double check to make sure his partner, Mairead, isn't within earshot before telling a story about how much success with Kilcoo means to him.
They have a young son, Leo, and Aaron loves him to bits but he loves winning AIB Ulster and All-Ireland titles too.
"We were talking about babies and stuff like that," said Branagan, referencing a chat with his other half who gave birth six weeks before Kilcoo's All-Ireland final defeat of Kilmacud Crokes last February.
"I said that the feeling after the whistle blew, it's a feeling that you can never, ever, ever replicate. I said, 'You can have a few babies - you can't have a few All-Irelands!' It definitely was a feeling I had never felt before, when that final whistle went. It's an emotion that if you could bottle and sell it, it would be the most addictive drug in the world. For a month, I was six-feet tall, the happiest man in the world."
Distilled right down, Branagan talks about the bus journey home from Croke Park after that All-Ireland win as one of the happiest times of his life.
"I hadn't drank in years and I had a drink and I remember just looking about the bus at everyone's faces and I remember thinking, 'This is the best day of everybody's life in here', everybody was feeling ecstatic," he said.
"I wish that bus journey could have went on for hours and hours because it was untouched. It was just the lads that had played, just the lads that had trained. It wasn't diluted by fans, not that it was going to be diluted, it was just that it was solely that group of boys. It was genuinely the best hour and a half drive of my life."
There's another bus journey that Branagan thinks about too, to give himself a jolt of motivation whenever it is required. It is the one home from Croke Park after the All-Ireland final defeat to Corofin in early 2020.
"Sitting on the bus after that match was over, it was the worst feeling I ever had in my stomach, and I remember looking out at the Corofin boys - I hope they mind me saying - there were a few of them having a cigarette and I was just thinking, 'Jeepers, I didn't even put butter on my bread for the last two weeks, never mind not taking a cigarette'. Ah look, sure we got there in the end."
Kilcoo might yet get there again too. If they beat Glen in Sunday's AIB Ulster final, they'll be just two steps from heaven. Defender Branagan, one of five brothers who featured in the provincial semi-final defeat of Enniskillen Gaels, admits they are in bonus territory to an extent, with an All-Ireland already in the bag, but he's also wary of striking while the iron is hot. And Kilcoo are red hot at the moment.
"We do understand that these clubs that go well for so many years never sustain it," he said. "You only have to look at probably the best club team of all time, Corofin - they haven't won Galway for a couple of years."
He is getting a feeling for what it is like to carry that mantle of greatness too, which sides like Corofin and, closer to home, Crossmaglen Rangers carried for years.
"This year, teams playing us are going out to play the All-Ireland champions," he said. "They're coming at us like it's the end of the world."
On a couple of occasions within their own county championship, Kilcoo almost succumbed. How they defeated Clonduff in the quarter-final is still a head scratcher. With the sides level after full-time, extra-time and penalties, it went to sudden death. Clonduff, at one stage, had a kick to dump out the county, Ulster and All-Ireland holders. But goalkeeper Niall Kane saved with his legs - 'just a bad penalty', according to Branagan - and Kilcoo, somehow, escaped to victory.
"I know that it looked very tight," acknowledged Branagan. "Honestly, I was standing there beside my brother, Daryl, as it was happening and Daryl says, 'We'll be grand'. And I thought, 'I'm not the only one here thinking it so'".
Confidence isn't a problem then though Glen could be their greatest challenge yet. Kilcoo needed extra-time to beat the Derry champions when they met at the semi-final stage last year.
"I felt that we were all really nervous going into that one, nervous about what the outcome would be and I think we probably got too caught up in all that side of things," said Branagan, referencing how then manager Mickey Moran had played for Glen.
"This year it seems to be a lot more...I won't say relaxed, but the pressure is definitely not the same."
