Irish Daily Star - Inside Sport
SOUL SEARCHING FOR DONEGAL
Boom and bust county are going in wrong direction
THERE’S a photograph on these pages that deserves close scrutiny.
It’s from a League game in 2002 in Dr Hyde Park and Stephen Lohan of Roscommon is on the ball.
Lohan is being pursued by his marker, and the shavenheaded figure looks familiar. He’s wearing green shorts and green and gold socks. He looks a bit like Donegal’s Kevin Cassidy. But the jersey... A blue one with the same crest and sponsor’s logo as on Lohan’s.
What the hell is going on? How are Roscommon and Donegal both wearing Roscommon shirts?
The answer is simple: Donegal did what was known back then as a Donegal. Travelled without an away strip, even though they should have known there would be a clash of colours.
That was the Donegal way at the time. Sloppy, disorganised, chaotic.
Later that year, only half a dozen players would get on the bus back from Croke Park, with the rest staying in the capital to ‘celebrate’ a draw with Dublin in the All-Ireland quarterfinals.
Cringe
On Sunday, Donegal — managerless and effectively relegated — will travel to a Roscommon side who have already surpassed expectations in their first season under Davy Burke.
But mention 2002 to Roscommon fans and they’ll cringe too. Two months on from that League game in Hyde Park, Roscommon played Donegal in a challenge match in Derry.
Afterwards, they stayed overnight in the Waterfoot Hotel. Late that night, two players returned to a pool room in the hotel and grabbed cues and set up the balls.
For some reason, they also decided to strip — and their game of ‘nude pool’ was caught on the CCTV cameras.
The footage was passed on to an English Sunday newspaper which ran the story over five pages, leading to a huge outcry.
Two months later, a humiliated Roscommon decided to disband the squad, presumably with the intent of starting off again with a clean slate.
What isn’t as well known is something that happened after a Donegal Championship match that summer.
Nude
They were doing the rounds of pubs in Donegal Town and the call went up from some — ‘anything Roscommon can do, we can do better’. The clothes came off, nude pool was given a go.
That was the time when, in Rory Kavanagh’s words, Donegal were the ‘tracksuit ravers’. Karl Lacey hates those yarns, hates them with a passion.
Remember, he was good enough to win two All Stars during Donegal’s time in the wilderness.
It’s only a couple of days since Paddy Carr stepped down as Donegal manager.
He is the first boss in the top flight to do so since Mickey Whelan with Dublin in 1997.
But the treatment of Lacey, who was in charge of the Academy, is an even bigger story.
The way in which the Donegal County Board operates is, let’s be kind, unusual. Press are excluded from meetings and certain journalists are briefed on matters, with others blanked.
There has even been an issue with some reporters attending Donegal games, kept waiting outside for a while for unspecified reasons while colleagues are already sitting in the press box.
Lacey had 40 coaches working with him. All have stepped down in support of the man who was Footballer of the Year in 2012.
Detail
What Lacey and his supporters have going for them is detail. Plenty of stuff has come into the public eye about meetings with officials, about budgets, about plans that were made and agreed. There are dates, there are records, there is evidence.
The Board haven’t offered much. A behind closed doors Special Committee meeting was heated, with several delegates standing up for Lacey and Co, and asking pointed questions.
But the official response afterwards was a watery, vague statement that the Board hoped fences can be mended with Lacey.
That will only happen if a number of officers step down from their positions.
There is plenty of sympathy out of there for Carr, but he should never have got the Donegal manager’s job.
The fact that a dozen potential candidates were sounded out before he got the nod makes it clear that he was a panic appointment.
Carr was confirmed as Donegal manager 97 days after Declan Bonner stepped down. The process had been shrouded in secrecy from day one.
Not only did the Donegal County Board announce that they wouldn’t be revealing the names of any candidates, the names of those on the interview panel were kept private too.
It’s since turned out that two of those on the interview panel ended up on Carr’s backroom team.
Cycle
Donegal was always a boom and bust county, but Lacey was determined to break that cycle.
Since 2011, Donegal have won an All-Ireland and five Ulster titles — matching what they’d won in their entire history up to then.
But Armagh won seven Ulsters and an All-Ireland between ’99 and ’08, more than they’d won in a century before that.
Very quickly, though, they dropped to Division Three. They are finding their feet again but there has been no silverware since 2008. Donegal could find themselves slipping very fast.
The word yesterday morning is that Croke Park officials are planning an intervention. Going in and examining what has gone on in a root-and-branch review.
That will be seen as embarrassing, but it might be the best thing to happen to Donegal.
What is heartening is the way the likes of Anthony Molloy, Eamon McGee, Damien Diver and Declan Bonner have spoken out in recent weeks.
For all the talk of player power in the GAA, ex-player power carries serious weight too. That could save Donegal.