The village of Eglish formed a guard of honour for its finest son yesterday, when the body of Tyrone captain Cormac McAnallen was returned to the family home where he died on Monday night.
Residents stood in single file along the road as the cortege passed through en route to Brantry, two miles away. The deceased's parents, Brendan and Bridget, his brothers Donal and Fergus, and his fiancée Aisling were in the leading cars.
Members of the Gaelic football and camogie teams wore their club jackets, while smaller children wore the black shirts of Eglish St Patrick's, or the white and red of Tyrone. A single black flag hung from a pole near the GAA clubhouse.
The window of the village shop and post office displayed the front page of yesterday's Irish News, devoted to a picture of the 24-year-old All-Star celebrating victory in the All-Ireland final barely five months ago.
A post-mortem examination carried out in Belfast over the past two days revealed that he died from a rare viral infection of the heart.
As the remains were returned to Tyrone in mid-afternoon, mourners joined the motorcade at points along the route, members of the county team among them. Once in Eglish, the GAA club supervised the organisation of the event, including the direction of traffic.
The McAnallen home is in open countryside on the edge of the Clogher valley. The roads were too narrow to deal with the traffic expected, so the GAA club commandeered an engineering works on the main Eglish-Caledon road as a car-park. The Tyrone county board provided buses to bring mourners the rest of the way.
The remains were received at the house by the parish priest, Father Patrick Breslin. Crowds queued outside to pay their respects, the first visitors including Kerry footballer Seamus Moynihan and referee Pat McEneaney. Hundreds more are expected today. The funeral Mass will take place at 11 a.m. tomorrow in St Patrick's Church, Eglish.
The young Tyrone captain died of a rare infection that affects only about one in 100,000 people. His heartbroken mother Bridget yesterday described how the family fought desperately to save Cormac's life. Mrs McAnallen said she attempted artificial respiration on her stricken son. "When I went into Cormac's bedroom, I knew there was something wrong. I looked for signs of life. I started to feel for a pulse but I couldn't feel it straight away," she said. An ambulance crew which arrived at the house worked for an hour to resuscitate her son but nothing could be done. "I probably feel more emotional today than I did yesterday. It just takes time to sink in."
His brother Donal (25) spoke graphically about the last moments of his brother's life. He was working on his university thesis when he heard what sounded like loud snoring from his brother's bedroom. "It got so loud so quickly I thought it might be a prank." He ran up the stairs and found Cormac lying on his side staring straight ahead.
"He gave a last wheeze and I told him to snap out of it, but he didn't. I just heard the very last gasp from him. It was shocking, it will be a horrendous memory for me."
-Additional reporting PA