Tomorrow, we will take up our usual seats in the Ard-Comhairle. Nancy’s getting the hair set, and if I do say so myself, she’ll look a million dollars in her salmon-coloured trouser suit.

Even now, all these years on, people are adamant her 2-7 from play was the torch that lit the flame for Camogie all over Ireland. That day she became the only player to have been commemorated on the jubilee team at half-time of a match in which she was playing, a distinction she still holds.

We have black and white Pathe News footage of her performance. I play it for visitors, after they’ve watched our daughters’ wedding videos.

A terrible pity she had to go off injured for the last 15 minutes. We’d have won it otherwise.

It was truly her finest hour, though as I have often reminded her, the goalie made a bad mistake for the second goal, and Nancy should really have taken her point. "I heard you shouting that at me as I was going through, Noel," she says, "but back then I thought I knew it all."

She’s hard on herself. I was trainer, and we’d never have got to the All-Ireland if I hadn’t switched her out to half-back for the championship. It was then we became great with each other and, indeed, the night of the final we had our first date in the Carlton Cinema on O’Connell Street.

An Irish Press photographer was passing by as we came out after watching the Maureen O’Hara and John Wayne classic, and next day we were on the front page: ‘Noel not such a Quiet Man as he walks out with star player."

We were married inside the decade and haven’t looked back since.

She’s very shy and won’t like the throng of autograph hunters tomorrow, and so, if the day is dry, she’ll toss off the headscarf and down to the sideline with her for a puckaround with fellow blasts from the past – Angela Downey, Liz Howard, Kathleen Costine, Michaela Harte, Joanne Cantwell, Fannie Mae, Elsie Walshe herself, and the entire Aghabullogue team of ’72.

I might stuff my trousers inside my socks as well, and do some drills for their weak sides just to pass the time between the three games.

I’m hoping for a Galway win. Liam Donoghue and I go back a long way. I met his father Miko driving the Galway team all over the country, and I often guided him into a tricky spot.

When young Liam started out on the buses, I went with him to Croke Park one Bank Holiday Monday to show him how he could reverse under the Hogan, and have her faced for home in case the team were beaten badly and needed a quick getaway.

He was 15 at the time, and keen.

He’s been calling Ballybore 213 for years. I helped him out a lot with his puck-outs, and three times this summer, I gave the girls a talk. "Play young Jessie close to goal at all times," I told him, squarely, just six weeks ago, "and there isn’t a backsman in the country who’ll stop her."

Liam has them flying. Noel Hickey himself would baulk at some of the tussling between Coleman and Curtin in the training matches. Nancy says Galway by about three points.

And this weekend, of all weekends, I’m inclined to agree with her

Lorry it into Noel first-time at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; visit www.knowledgeablenoel.com; Skype (knowledgeable.noel); and Facebook (Knowledgeable Noel.)

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