The deluge said it all — it was an outpouring from every corner of Ireland and well beyond that spoke volumes about Mick O’Dwyer and the impact he had and the power of his personality that transcended his game of football and brought him from the sports pages to the front pages.

Micko the footballer; Micko the coach and manager. Micko the missionary, who went far beyond his small bailiwick in South Kerry and left a mark everywhere.

The footballer with Waterville and South Kerry, with Kerry and with Munster.

The coach/manager with Waterville, with Kerry, with Kildare, with Laois, with Wicklow and with Clare, before he brought it all back home to guide the Waterville-Dromid U-14s a decade ago — his final act in a journey through football that had a profound impact on players everywhere he went.

That Micko loved driving and from his first day as a county senior there was nothing better than being behind the field and heading on a football journey — to training, to play a match, to conduct his legendary wire-to-wire training sessions, to maraud the sideline with his rolled-up programme on big match days.

The first time was in 1957 for his championship debut — from Waterville to Waterford with a car-full of fellow footballers for a provincial semi-final in the sunny south east.

Mick O’Connell was picked up at Reenard Point after his boat journey from the island; Jerome O’Shea and Ned Fitzgerald were next in Cahersiveen and off they went.

Jerome reckoned they travelled in a Buick owned by Micko’s father who was a hackney driver, while Ned thought it was a Baby Ford — whatever the model it was a journey into the unknown for the driver on his first day out.

Why? Kerry could only muster 14 players and had to summon a 15th from the Kerry press corps in attendance — that was bad, but worse followed with Waterford’s victory that had Micko thinking his inter-county career might be over just after it started.

Who knows, there mightn’t be too many more drives for football ahead of him, but he needn’t have worried, because driving home that day, via Youghal where they had a pit-stop for a dance, was the seconds of many tens of thousands that followed.

The distance didn’t bother Micko — once there was a football at the end of it and that’s why he came to Clare in late 2012 when the then chairman of the Clare County Board Michael O’Neill made the journey to Waterville and persuaded him to have one last go on the managerial merry-go-round.

O’Neill was a great fan of the Kerry team of the 1970s and ‘80s, and after Micko had been sounded out beforehand about being Micheál McDermott’s replacement he made his move and got his man.

Of course, the first time of note that the great man crossed the Shannon Estuary into Clare was on an infamous day in the annals of Clare underwhelming football history.

July 1, 1979 — the Miltown Massacre, when his Kerry team at the peak of its powers beat Clare by 9-21 to 1-9 in a game that represented Ground Zero for those of a saffron and blue hue, even if they thought there could be no way back.

The Kerry players passed no apologies for the pain they inflicted on Clare that day — to pull the handbrake long after the game was won would have run the risk of the curly finger from Micko and then losing their place for the Munster final and beyond. And Micko would pass no apologies for doing it.

Driving away from Miltown Malbay that day Micko couldn’t have envisaged that one day he’d be driving back to the Banner to take up the reins as Clare manager, but the wheels of football fortune finally moved in that direction some 33 years later.

Many blueblood football folk in Clare will always remember the day, because they were there to see it when he was unveiled on a November Sunday afternoon in Páirc Naomh Mhuire in Quilty.

It was the day that Clare county champions Kilmurry Ibrickane went toe-to-toe with their Kerry counterparts Dr Crokes in a Munster Club semi-final.

Quilty was agog when the great man arrived with county chairman Michael O’Neill and took his seat in the stand. Micko. A prince of pigskin; Clare manager. It’s happening.

A winner everywhere he went. Kerry. Kildare. Laois. Wicklow. And now Clare. Why not? With a sprinkling of his stardust, could this be the start of something.

Eight All-Irelands with Kerry; a first Leinster title with Kildare since 1956 in ’98 and a first All-Ireland final appearance since ’35; a first Leinster title with Laois since ’46 in 2003, while he also brought both Leinster counties to National League finals and won three with Kerry.

And at Wicklow there was a Tommy Murphy Cup title in ’07 and some memorable championship victories in his four-year tenure — against Kildare in ’08 and Down in ’09. All of this after 127 players turned up for a trial when he parked his car up in the Garden of Ireland for the first time.

Hope floated that he could have the same galvanising effect in Clare, but it never happened and it was something that Micko himself knew long before his final curtain call in inter-county management that came with a 3-17 to 0-10 All-Ireland Qualifier loss against Laois in Cusack Park in July 2013.

“I know in Clare we haven’t the big numbers,” he said before the Munster semi-final against Cork, which was his 181st senior championship since starting out 56 years previously. “Hurling is the big game here – as I have found out since I came here,” he added.

He was right. There weren’t 127 footballers in the county that wanted to play for Clare; there wasn’t the fever pitch for football in Clare like there was in Kerry, Kildare, Laois and Wicklow.

The endgame then, was a disappointing denouement, but there was something. It was Micko who named Clare football’s generational player that was Gary Brennan, who had been given his senior inter-county start by Paidí Ó Sé in 2007, as his captain and he held onto the job for a further seven years.

And, in staying only one year with Clare Micko ensured that he made time to go back to where it all began to experience something that must have felt as special as any of his All-Ireland or provincial titles on the inter-county stage on his journeys around the country.

It was in 2014 and Micko’s long driving was finally done. The Baby Fords he had in the ‘50s were long gone, so too was his father’s Buick that famously became both a prop and stage for Sam Maguire to feature in the greatest Mick O’Dwyer photograph of them all.

Instead, he had to make just a short hop from his home to the football field where he took over the management of the Waterville-Dromid U-14 side.

The rest was history — of course they won the county final, to prove that the stardust was still there to create a fitting denouement to his journey in football, whether playing or managing, that spanned over 60 years.

Fitting because it was back where it all began, a path that had also been followed by his great adversary from the 1970s and ‘80s that was Kevin Heffernan.

Between them they changed the course of GAA history in games that will be recalled for as long as football is kicked, but you can be sure they got as much of a kick out of what they did with St Vincent’s and Waterville respectively.

Heffo winning a Junior D Hurling Championship with fellow great Des Foley as co-manager; Micko winning the U-14 Division 8 League final against a Templenoe-Sneem-Derrynane combination.

There’s something in that; there’s loads in that.

Heffo and Micko are having a chat now, reviewing their epic clashes once more, maybe over a game of golf, or a cup of tea.

They have a huge audience.

Enough to pack out Croke Park.