Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I COULDN’T GO MY EOIN WAY..
Donnelly thought about walking away from the Erne panel this season but realised that the team means too much to him
THOUGHTS on whether he’d play with Fermanagh this year danced around Eoin Donnelly’s head for months.
The l ong-ser ving county captain had a suite of valid excuses to step back this year, but ultimately he rejected them all.
He’s a frontline worker as a respirator y physiotherapist at th e Ul st er Hospital i n Dundonald, dealing directly with Covid-19 patients on a daily basis.
“Each day you went to work you know you’re going to be meeting that head-on with patients who are very, very unwell and, in some cases, people who aren’t going to survive,” he explains.
“Dealing with that on a day-to-day basis and then you leave and go to play football…
“I would have always been completely football-mad and I think this year has probably been the first time that I’m starting to actually realise, you know what? Football is a hobby and a pastime and something you need to enjoy and not take too serious because you can see how things can change quickly for people.”
In the midst of all that, he and his wife welcomed their first child in July and then, shortly after Fermanagh had restarted training, the panel was ravaged by an outbreak of the virus last month.
Deciding to play with Fermanagh this year “wasn’t clearcut”, but he says he just couldn’t leave his teammates in the lurch.
“I knew relegation was on the cards for Fermanagh. We had two games to save our League season.
“There was big pressure there. It’s not that easy just to say, ‘I’m not playing this year’ and leave the rest of your teammates hanging out to dry, as such . So that weighed heavily.
“I kind of decided on the back of that, that I wasn’t going to leave this season without at least trying, if I could play in any capacity.” Fermanagh inevitably went down anyway given how boss Ryan Mcmenamin’s (inset) plans had been thrown in the air, but the Championship always brings fresh optimism.
Another factor in Donnelly’s decision was fear of missing out.
While he acknowledges ahead of tomorrow’s tie with
Down that “Fermanagh hasn’t won the Ulster Championship in 136 years of the Association so we’re not going to get ahead of ourselves that way”, what if they did something in this outlier of a year and Donnelly wasn’t involved?
“I know my uncle, John D o n n e l ly, h e p l ay e d for Fermanagh until 1981 and he retired and Fermanagh got to the Ulster final in 1982.
“I’ve never asked him about it but I ’m sure he probably thinks back, one more year, mi g h t h av e mad e a bi g difference to him but just to have that opportunity to play in an Ulster final…”