BUILT TO LAST
DONNELLY’S LONG ROAD TO THE TOP WITH TYRONE
THERE is a framed space on the bedroom wall of the Donnelly home in Trillick which is primed for the filling.
It is not that Mattie or Richie Donnelly have any interior decorating leanings, just boyhood dreams that are now tantalisingly close to being realised.
‘We would be very, very close,’ explains Mattie. ‘We’ve shared the same room since we were younger, we do most things together and we’d be extremely close. There was always that understanding of what each of us wanted.
‘Even above the beds at home we have the jerseys from the All Ireland minor final that we played in so we’d like to replace them,’ reveals the 27-year-old Tyrone captain.
Richie, two years his junior, has traced his older sibling’s footstep meticulously to the point that he was an All-Ireland minor winner two years (2010) after Mattie won his.
Both of them could argue that they were involved in three All Ireland minor winning teams; they were ball boys at training in 2001 and 04, when their father, Liam, managed Tyrone to Under-18 success as well.
But tomorrow, for the first time and with their father looking on, they get to play on the same pitch on All-Ireland final day.
It may have been always fate, but circumstances also dictated it should come to pass.
An injury and identity crisis — Tyrone lost two inside forwards, Lee Brennan and Mark Bradley, to injury in the opening round Ulster Championship defeat to Monaghan — created the opening and the manner of the defeat also exposed their glaring lack of a physical presence in the full-forward line.
That was the cue for Richie to come in at full-forward — a role he has relished principally as a target for direct ball, which has seen him rack up 2-8 on the way to the final — and for Mattie to return to his favoured centre-back slot.
Together they are thriving; Mattie leading the way, Richie learning from the path big brother has taken. Given their career trajectory — Mattie is a two-time AllStar, while prior to this summer Richie has spent three years on the fringes — it would be fair to suggest that the latter has a lot of ground to make up on his big brother in terms of natural ability but that is not how it is. ‘The thing about Richie is he’s probably the more naturally talented of the two of us. ‘From school level he would have been the main man at his age group in school and throughout minor and Tyrone underage. ‘The body seemed to break down on him at a few vital stages in his career and that curtailed his progression onto the senior panel. ‘And then when he did get in, he was probably one of Tyrone’s best player in 2016 until injury cut that season short. From then it has been stop-start.
‘His talent was never in doubt. It was just building up the tolerance and capacity in the body to withstand inter-county football.’
Therein is the difference, though, because it was that realisation at an early age that set Mattie (left) on the road to stardom. That self-awareness — he was thin and scrawny as a kid — was rooted in a couple of incidents at underage level. On one of his first sessions with an U17 development academy, he struggled to complete a single pull-up, while he also found himself him desperately seeking answers after an U16 match where he was unable to cope with a direct opponent.
But his self-awareness was matched by his self-determination, and he nagged his father into getting a conditioning programme off Paddy Tally, which he duly followed to the letter of the law.
‘There was a lot of weights in it. Like, curls back then, which you wouldn’t hear tell of now. Shoulder presses. Everything really.
‘It was just something I always paid great attention to and was very diligent with. The content you are given has changed massively over the years but it was certainly a starting point.
‘I suppose you were kind of like the black sheep about the place then by going to the gym as much as I did on my own.
‘It definitely wasn’t the popular thing to do back then, but I’m glad I had the foresight to do that.’
It is not the only foresight he has shown. His talent was never the issue, something that was glaringly obvious in that 2008 minor success from which Peter Harte would also graduate, but when Mickey Harte dangled the carrot of promotion to the senior squad in front of him when he was 19, he did not bite.
Again, he literally looked in the mirror and let its reflection tell the truth.
‘Looking around the dressing room you knew yourself, competing with boys in training, the likes of Stevie O’Neill and [Kevin] Hub Hughes. And you were even getting feedback from photographs and you knew you just weren’t at the same level physically as those boys.
I didn’t think I was ready looking at other county teams — Cork and Kildare were prominent back then and they were massive men. I didn’t think physically you could compete with them boys and it was something I was wary of.
‘I didn’t want to be in the county panel unless I could contribute so I took two years out at that stage to build myself up to the required level. Probably the most difficult thing for me was saying no to Mickey.
‘Because you are always thinking that there might have been a chance he would see that in a negative way and not give you your chance the next year.’
He did, though, and Donnelly’s progression serves also as a reminder of the value of not rushing young players up a hill they can’t scale.
Had Donnelly not the courage of his convictions as a teenager, chances are he would not be where he is now. And this is as close to the top of the football world as he has ever been. The maturity he showed as a kid to bide his time displayed the kind of conviction which ended with Harte ringing last Christmas to advise him that he wanted him to be his captain.
‘It is something I have found easy because I genuinely do care for them. I look out for the players,’ he says.
More importantly, he believes in them. A year ago, when they were savaged by 12 points at Croke Park in the semi-final by the same Dublin team they will face tomorrow, an All-Ireland looked like a world away but not from where he was looking.
‘At any level be it underage, college or schools, we have players in the dressing-room who have competed with the best in Ireland. I always believed the answers lay within the changing room. It was just trying to get solutions out on the pitch.
‘My own club in 2014 were heavily beaten in an intermediate final but went on to be the best team in Tyrone the year after so I have seen how quickly you can turn it around.’
‘Richie is probably the more naturally talented’ ‘I was the black sheep, going to the gym as much as I did’ ‘I just knew I wasn’t at the same level physically as those boys’