Key man: In the life of Ryan McMenamin, nothing is ever simple. He made his way down the tunnel just as Brian Dooher lifted the big silver bowl for the last time. Face flushed, spiky black hair wreathed in sweat, his features a picture of solemn satisfaction.

He was mobbed as he moved through the crowd, a slender figure trying to escape the jostling and the back slapping and he could just see the heaven of the Tyrone dressingroom when a steward took him by the arm and whispered something in his ear.

"ME? AGAIN?" pleaded Riser, offering the wounded pout of a schoolboy scamp who has been collared in the wrong. There was nothing for it. He would spend his first minutes as an All-Ireland champion in confinement.

"Missed the speech. Away getting drug-tested," he sighed later on.

Give a dog a bad name. He has had his brushes with authority before but after a long and sometimes chastening season, McMenamin has finished smelling of roses.

It was an All-Ireland final in which the champions had radiant figures all over the field. Peter Canavan, the old master, touched the ball about five times, scored 1-2 from play and still found time to disappear and take in a massage during the second half.

Brian McGuigan displayed all the class and time that made his father the brightest figure in the dark decades. As for Philip Jordan? Well, there seemed to be about three Philip Jordans on the field, so effervescent was the Moy man.

But in the corner, McMenamin went about his business just as he has done throughout this epic and wonderful championship. He is just about the perfect corner back and not even 70 minutes shadowing Colm "the Gooch" Cooper did anything to alter that perception.

"Jeez, he is a great player," McMenamin said of the celebrated young Kerry man.

Riser stood in the packed Tyrone dressingroom, still wearing the number two jersey and wrapped in a salmon-coloured towel, shivering like a youngster after swimming lessons.

"And he probably feels hard done by to be on the losing side. Like, once he gets the ball in his hands, there is not much you can do. It was just one of them games there - I kind of restricted myself from going up the field."

Early on, when Cooper flashed a magnificent point with withering economy and then flicked the perfectly-weighted ball for Dara Ó Cinnéide's goal, it looked like McMenamin would go the way of so many defenders who toiled in the company of the ginger enigma.

"That goal was probably a bit of slack marking by myself," he said, frowning at the memory.

"Gooch got it and did what he does best. He linked with Eoin Brosnan and then straight over the top and the ball is in the net. Had to pick myself up and you know, it was only a goal. I just got straight back into the game."

He did not blink. He continued to watch Cooper with great vigilance and respect but as Tyrone began to play after 20 minutes, McMenamin began to express himself.

Those rapacious runs of his, composed and elusive, featured more and more as the Ulster lads stamped their character onto the afternoon.

"Ryan has that fire," Mickey Harte beamed afterwards. "He has that quality within him and it is inherent. He lifts players all around him.

"Ryan is a 'points' man. He doesn't want go for the knock-out punch. So even after the goal, he just went on with his business. He wants the points win and I think he got that today."

Canavan's peerless goal, which sent shivers down the spine of 80,000 people had its origins in McMenamin racing out to claim a ball sent deep into Tyrone territory.

As Riser warmed up, he felt emboldened and dared himself to break further and further up the field.

"Couldn't resist," he grinned. "I dunno, maybe there were times when I should have pushed further. But it is hard when you are marking the Gooch because at the back of your mind is always the fact that he is up there.

"In fairness, though, he tracked back after me as well."

Nothing is more deafening that the silence of 80,000 thousand people and during the slow-burning tension of those long injury-time minutes, McMenamin felt it was eerily quiet.

By then he was just marking territory as much as shadowing Cooper and when the final whistle finally went, he had, remarkably, lost sight of the Kerry cult figure. He sought him out but was swept on a wave of red and white euphoria across the fabled field and all the way to the reality of the drug testing room.

"I was looking to see him. Hopefully, I'll get to chat him before too long. He is a dead cert for the player of the year anyhow. He deserves it."

And that is true. In fact, about the only player who might get in his way is Ryan McMenamin.