DEJA NEW AS RIVALS FACE UP IN ULSTER
Donegal and Derry clash has many subplots
IT’S the first big showdown of this championship, and Saturday’s Ulster quarter-final between Derry and Donegal at Celtic Park has generated All-Ireland final levels of anticipation and interest in the north-west.
On Wednesday, the Watty Graham club – the current All-Ireland champions – posted on X: “The draw for the club allocation of Derry tickets was conducted this evening & was videoed for transparency. 55 names were pulled out for the 110 tickets. Winners to be notified this evening.”
It scarcely matters that regardless of the outcome, both will still be in the hunt for the Sam Maguire and could conceivably meet twice more at the business end of the championship.
After a less-than-inspiring start to the competition, this clash between the Division 1 and Division 2 league champions ought to kick-start it.
And even though the GAA frowns on the cult of the personality, much of the interest in the contest stems from the presence of Mickey Harte and Jim McGuinness on the sideline.
The two managerial giants of Ulster football locked horns for three years more than a decade ago. Though much has changed in the interim, the prospect of them pitting their wits against each other again in championship football has whetted everybody’s appetite.
There is a sense of deja vu about their personal rivalry, which has come full circle.
On a filthy night in January, nearly 5,000 people turned up in Healy Park, Omagh, to see the first instalment of ‘Harte v McGuinness: The Sequel’.
The former Tyrone manager returned to his native county, as Derry boss, while McGuinness was back at the helm in Donegal after a 10-year sabbatical.
The McKenna Cup final was an uneventful, grim affair save for a burst of bad temper, which led to an outbreak of scuffles 15 minutes into the second half. Brendan Rogers and Paddy McBrearty were red-carded and Oisín Gallen was also sent off before the end after picking up a second yellow.
REMARKABLE
Derry won by double scores (012 to 0-6) to maintain Harte’s remarkable record in the pre-season tournament. It was his 13th (12 with Tyrone) win in the competition.
In 2010, when McGuinness took over a dysfunctional and under-performing Donegal, Tyrone, under Harte’s stewardship, were the kings of Ulster football. Granted, their halcyon days, when they won three All-Ireland SFC titles in five years in the noughties, had passed, but they had just won back-to-back Ulster titles in 2009-’10.
“They were the barometer,” wrote McGuinness in his acclaimed autobiography Until Victory Always. “They were going for three Ulsters in a row.”
Long before he became manager of Donegal, McGuinness was envious of Tyrone. At every age level, Donegal were always less organised than their nextdoor neighbours.
In his book, he recalled being marked by one player in an underage match in Castlederg. The Tyrone player literally walked all over him, his boot stamping down on McGuinness’s face before laughing when the referee didn’t take any action.
During the long winter of 2010, when McGuinness repeatedly sent his players over the top of the trenches in training, he often told them that story.
He backed them to end their losing streak in the Ulster Championship – they hadn’t won a match since 2007 – and make it to the semi-final, where their probable opponents would be the defending champions.
Their first managerial clash was a poignant occasion. Less than two weeks after Harte’s daughter Michaela was murdered, Tyrone hosted Donegal in a McKenna Cup tie in Edendork. The home side won comfortably, as McGuinness kept his blanket defence plan under wraps.
Donegal’s indiscipline had cost them in the past. The 2007 Ulster semi-final was a case in point. Having won the National League and knocked Armagh out in the quarter-final with a fortuitous late goal, they had high hopes of toppling Tyrone.
The 2011 team adopted a ‘not today’ mantra. If a Tyrone player spoke to them on the field, they all responded with the same message, ‘Not today’.
Nevertheless, it looked like business as usual in Clones in the 2011 semi-final as Tyrone raced into an early lead. Gradually, Donegal reeled them in and a late goal from Dermot Molloy, after Michael Murphy had stripped Martin Swift of possession, decided the issue.
It was a watershed moment in the football relationship between Donegal and Tyrone. McGuinness went on to mastermind two more Ulster Championship wins over Tyrone in 2012 and 2013. Under his successor, Rory Gallagher, Donegal beat them again in 2015.
Finally, in the 2016 Ulster final, late points from Seán Cavanagh, Peter Harte and Kieran McGeary saw Tyrone come from one behind to win by two and secure their first Ulster title since 2010.
RANKLES
The 2011 loss still rankles with Harte, as he acknowledged in his most recent memoir: “Their rise happened on our watch and we had so many opportunities to stop it that day in Clones; 2011 tilted the balance for Donegal. If we held them back for a year, they might never have broken through. Our rivalry with Donegal got really heated when McGuinness took over. We were the top dogs in Ulster at that stage; they wanted to take over.”
Over the subsequent years, the rivalry became bitter. McGuinness recalled a particularly fractious league clash in Omagh in 2013 when Donegal were All-Ireland champions.
“From the moment the door of our coach opened, you could feel a hostility about the place. It wasn’t nice. It wasn’t nice walking into the dressing rooms and finding that there was nowhere for us to do a warm-up,” he said.
He spoke of the taunts from the crowd. The game was “very physical, edgy” with 50 frees, 13 yellow cards and two Donegal players sent off. Somebody spat at Karl Lacey, the then reigning Footballer of the Year, who was injured and sitting in the stand.
“Sledging was a big part of their game. You had to be mentally tough to withstand that. They were bad for it and liable to say anything. Some of it was personal.”
Afterwards, Harte sought out McGuinness and offered an apology for what happened to Lacey. According to McGuinness, Harte said Donegal had been great champions. The Donegal manager seized on the word ‘had’ and used it to drive his players forward until the championship meeting in Ballybofey, which Donegal won by six points.
Not since McGuinness was at the start of his playing career with Donegal had there been any sense of bitter rivalry between them and Derry. In the early 1990s, when they were two of the country’s top sides, they clashed in two memorable Ulster finals in 1992 and 1993.
On both occasions, the underdogs prevailed and went on to win their maiden All-Ireland, with Donegal becoming champions in 1992 and Derry succeeding them the following September.
Saturday could mark the start of a new phase of the Donegal v Derry football rivalry – and begin the latest chapter in a personal rivalry as well.