For Derry and Tony Scullion, the early 90s brought a period of immense success against the backdrop of the ongoing turmoil in Northern Ireland.
Scullion broke into the Derry team at corner-back in the late 1980s and was man-of-the-match in their 1987 Ulster final triumph.
A Ballinascreen man, Scullion is the subject of the latest instalment of TG4's Laochra Gael series, in an episode which airs on Thursday February 1st.
Four times an All-Star winner, Scullion is among the very finest full-backs in Gaelic football history, but the road which ultimately brought him to All-Ireland glory with Derry in 1993 was not an easy one to navigate.
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Derry: Tony Scullion recalls harrowing experience at border checkpoint during Troubles
Ulster football enjoyed a period in the sun in the early 1990s. Between 1991 and 1994, every All-Ireland final was won by an Ulster county, with Donegal (1992) and Derry (1993) both winning their first-ever Sam Maguire title during that time.
This all occurred, however, against the backdrop of the Troubles, and life was not easy for the players who brought such success to the football teams of the north.
15 January 2024; Former Derry footballer Tony Scullion attends the launch of TG4's award-winning Laochra Gael series at the Light House Cinema in Dublin as the Gaelic sport biography series returns for another season. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
Tony Scullion, star of that 1993 team, came from deep in rural Derry, and remembers his local parish of Ballinascreen avoiding the worst of the Troubles in the latest episode of TG4's Laochra Gael.
"We didn't care what religion or who you were," says Scullion, "we were all neighbours, we were all friends, we all helped each other. Yes, we lived through bad times but we all supported each other around Ballinascreen.
"Thanks be to God, it didn't hit our area and our community too bad. But it wasn't far away from you.
"We had our own experiences of that too. Security forces perhaps didn't look too well on the GAA players. Personally, I had a couple of bad experiences myself"
Indeed, involvement in the GAA did not help the likes of Scullion to appease the British Armed Forces.
Scullion goes on to tell a harrowing story of being pulled in at the Aughnacloy border checkpoint, the same one as where 23-year-old Tyrone man Aidan McInespie had been shot in the back by a soldier in 1988.
Just as McInespie had been travelling to a match, Scullion and friends were returning from GAA duties when they fell foul of the security forces at the checkpoint.
"One experience was when we were coming home from a county hurling match. [There were] four of us in the car, and we were crossing the border with hurls and helmets and GAA bags.
"We were pulled into a shed. That was the checkpoint that Aidan McInespie was shot dead at.
"Each one of us was put into a different corner of the shed and we were as much as interrogated. Men running around with guns. The four of us got into the car again and we were terrified. It scarred me a wee bit."
29 June 1997; Tony Scullion of Derry in action against Ciaran McBride of Tyrone during the Ulster GAA Football Senior Championship Semi-Final match between Tyrone and Derry at St. Tiernach's Park in Clones, Monaghan. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
Incidents such as these were sadly not infrequent during a dark time in Irish history, and Scullion says that the experience left him so scarred that he henceforth refused to drive through a border checkpoint alone at night.
The late 1990s brought the movement for peace in Northern Ireland. It also brought the end of Tony Scullion's inter-county career, and he bowed out with four All-Stars, two Ulster titles, and an All-Ireland winner's medal to his name.
And, all these years later, he still has respect for everyone in the North, even if another story of being stopped by security forces leads him to reiterate that his opinion will not budge.
"That's what we lived through. I remember going in a work van to Derry and being asked, 'where are you going to?' We said we were going to Derry. He didn't like us saying that, so we were pulled in. They were looking for us to say something else.
"It'll always be Derry for me, from the day I was born and it'll be Derry until the day I die. And, if there's something wrong with that, well it's too bad. I respect everybody's opinion.
"Everybody has an opinion, and they can call it whatever they want. I absolutely respect that - but it's Derry to me."
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