They started the year as nobody's favourites and that suited them fine. Sometime last winter, the footballers of Sligo sat down in a cold dressing room and made themselves some promises.

Eamon O'Hara must have heard those speeches before. He has been through the isolated days of glory and more frequent afternoons of absolute humiliation that have characterised Sligo football.

Yesterday, minutes after winning the medal he had worked towards since his debut season of 1994, the Tourlestrane man was taken aback at how suddenly it had happened.

"I don't have words for it. It is 32 years of adding it up as the time goes by. The last few minutes on the sideline was amazing and when the referee blew the whistle, you could just feel the relief in the players and the crowd. It was amazing. It was just great.

"This year we felt we had a team. Tommy has the players talking about football rather than just keeping things to themselves. From the word go, once the draw was made, we felt we could beat New York and Roscommon and then have a go at whoever came through. It was all about hard work, it wasn't about attractive football and it wasn't pretty out there today. The last few minutes were a war of attrition.

"Galway hit us with everything and we stood up to it. Everyone contributed."

Although they were delighted by this achievement, none of the Sligo team seemed particularly astonished. That may have been down to the attitude of Tommy Breheny, who leaned against the wall and spoke of this remarkable day as though there was no great secret to it.

"We are very happy," he said airily. " We always believed we would win the game. The players had no doubts coming here. We decided to play with the breeze and give Galway no advantage at all. We were only a point up at half-time but we weren't that worried because we were shooting into the 'shooting goals' - not that we shot that well into them.

"We were missing chances and we were worried. But they were tricky because of the breeze. They could have proven costly. But this is huge for Sligo football. None of the players were born when Sligo last won and they didn't even know what it felt like. There is a lot of work going on now with young players and this is a great boost to them. It was fantastic and we will enjoy a night or two now."

A campaign that started so impressively for Peter Ford and Galway ended in abject disappointment. Maybe Ford, who knows the make-up of this Sligo team first hand, felt this day coming in his bones. He pulled no punches in his assessment.

"Sligo deserved it. There was a period when they missed a lot of chances and they left it there for us but we were not able to do anything about it. It is hard to explain. We were up for the game but we just did not perform. We prepared well and were up for the game. We had no excuses. It wasn't any one area that lost it for us. We were just beaten by a better team on the day. I was in Sligo a few years myself and I know the desire is there. But it is there in Galway as well. The players didn't make all the sacrifices to hand a title to Sligo. Since the Mayo match, we haven't been able to recapture that intensity or ruthlessness or desire since and have paid the price."

Michael McNamara recalled the anxiety of the last 20 minutes when Sligo desperately sought that would push them out of sight. Instead they registered wide after wide before the centre back kicked a famous point.

"At one stage, Derek Savage turned around to me and said, "that must be five or six now". And it was. The forwards were to-ing and fro-ing so I felt I better go up and do something. Then I had an injury so we had a few nail-biting moments towards the end."

The fact that it was so close, though, made it all the sweeter. The final whistle released 30 years of disappointment, of Sligo taking their beating and going home.

"I have a Connacht medal now," beamed Eamon O'Hara. "I could be smart and say that one medal doesn't make a collection. We'll have to try for more next year."

Suddenly, Connacht didn't seem all that hard to crack.