They gathered in their thousands yesterday in and around a tiny Co Tyrone churchyard in the distraught village of Eglish to celebrate the short life of a sporting icon, Cormac McAnallen.
McAnallen was revered throughout Ireland as one of the greatest Gaelic footballers of his time, a young man who had won every possible honour in the game. Yet he was still just 24-years-old when he died of a rare viral infection of the heart earlier this week.
He captained the Tyrone Minors as All-Ireland runners-up in 1997 and to take the title in 1998; he won the Sigerson Cup with Queen's in 2000; captained the All-Ireland Under-21 winners in 2000-2001; and was 2001 Young Footballer of the Year.
Last year he was an All-Ireland winner and Allstar, while only three weeks ago, captaining Tyrone, he hoisted the McKenna Cup after comprehensively beating Donegal and bringing his county the one senior trophy that had eluded them last year.
But the acclaim he neither sought nor felt comfortable with. McAnallen's humility had never succumbed to the magnitude of his achievements.
It was no surprise that after completing his third-level education at Queen's University and UCD, he chose to return home to live in the tranquil beauty of the townland of Ballaghkillgevill, tucked away in a secluded corner of south Tyrone known as the Brantry.
It's the place of the happy childhood that moulded his exceptional talent. It's also the place where McAnallen had planned to build a new home and settle down with his fiancée, Ashlene Moore, following their wedding next year.
Summer days and weekends were often spent along with his two brothers at the home of their grandparents in Moy, just a few miles away.
Charlie O'Neill, now aged 87, would entertain on the fiddle, and football became an issue thanks to the influence of uncle Peter
O'Neill, a member of the Tyrone squad which reached the 1986 All-Ireland final.
"We would have gone to the Moy youth club on a Friday night and played various sports," recalled McAnallen's older brother, Donal. "I suppose that's where Cormac honed a lot of his competitive edge, and that was continued with Eglish under-age teams."
A love of local history and of the Irish language was encouraged by his parents, Brendan and Bridget, and the McAnallen offspring were learning the native tongue by the age of seven, attending language classes at the local Bard Centre, run by the Brantry Area Rural Development Association, of which Brendan McAnallen is a founder member.
The organisation was set up in 1983 to revitalise the Brantry end of the parish, which had seen decline since the 1960s, when a population shift was facilitated by the construction of housing estates in Eglish.
McAnallen's early education was at Derrylatinee Primary School, and he and brothers, Donal and Fergus, often made the three-mile walk on foot. He then fast-tracked to grammar school life.
Having successfully completed the 11-plus examination barely aged 10, his academic career continued to blossom at St Patrick's College in Armagh, where outstanding sporting achievement was bettered only by the excellence he embraced as a student.
Always ahead of his time, McAnallen was already preparing to begin his second year as a Queen's University student when he led the Tyrone Minors to All-Ireland success in 1998, most of his team-mates still only schoolboys.
His victory speech, delivered as Gaeilge, struck a chord with young and old and remains one of the lasting and most striking memories of a young man who by then was already a legend in the making.
A year earlier he had shown the first signs of his leadership skills when he took on the responsibility of helping his colleagues come to terms with the tragic death of Paul McGirr, a promising young footballer who died after suffering a freak injury while playing for Tyrone in an Ulster Minor championship game at Omagh.
After graduating from Queen's with a BA in Modern History, McAnallen moved to Dublin, where he gained a teaching qualification at UCD, enabling him to take up a post in St Catherine's College, Armagh in 2002.
There, he taught history, politics, PE, maths, French, religious education and Irish, and had already been promoted to the post of youth sport co-ordinator.
A hectic schedule, dominated by his dedication to his teaching career and his involvement with the Tyrone football team, placed heavy demands on someone who never did things by half.
Always generous, he never declined the many requests to make public appearances and had become a much-loved public figure and role model for the young, particularly after last September's Croke Park triumph.
Spare moments were spent indulging himself in his favourite pastime, quizzes. University Challenge was essential viewing in the McAnallen household, where Cormac would regularly go head-to-head with his mother in a fiercely competitive battle. Unsurprisingly, the son would frequently emerge victorious, having done so on numerous occasions while representing his schools and football club on quiz teams.
He captained the St Patrick's Armagh team which won RTÉ's Blackboard Jungle quiz series in 1997 and was due to represent Eglish in the Tyrone Scor finals in Ballygawley tomorrow evening after playing for Tyrone in a National Football League game against Cork.
"He was so quick on the buzzer, he could always anticipate that split-second ahead, and I suppose he was able to translate that into sport as well," said Donal, also a member of the Eglish quiz team.
An obscure parish hall on Scor finals night is a far cry from a heaving Croke Park on All-Ireland final day, but even for a man who had won every possible honour the Gaelic game has to offer, this was the sort of place, a special place among his own people, where McAnallen felt most comfortable.
He is survived by his parents, Brendan and Bridget, brothers, Donal and Fergus, and fiancée, Ashlene.
Cormac McAnallen: born February 11th, 1980; died March 2nd, 2004