THE MIRED NATURE of the Ulster championship means that rivalries and dynasties are often intertwined and tangled like the Christmas lights tend to be when you take down the box from the attic in December.
Donegal and Monaghan have taken the Anglo-Celt Cup home on the last five occasions, with, beforehand, Tyrone or Armagh winning every final since 1999. All nine teams in the province have been in the final in the last 20 years.
On Sunday, though, Mickey Harte’s Tyrone – unbeaten in 18 games in 2016 – have a chance to make the leaves brown on the Indian Summer Donegal have enjoyed over them since 2011.
With Tyrone going for three Ulsters in a row that summer, the three-time All-Ireland winners met Jim McGuinness’s upstarts in the provincial semi-final.
McGuinness had drummed into his players’ heads since meeting them the previous November one crisp autumnal day at the Rosapenna in Downings that Tyrone – and not Armagh – were the team Donegal had to topple if they harnessed any hopes of winning Ulster.
McGuinness’s training sessions were known to be built on repetition, steady rehearsals that would soon become repertoire. And when he spoke, in his own excellent way of deliverance, Tyrone’s name was brought up at almost every opportunity.
The night McGuinness was appointed in July 2010 he told his mother Maureen at the family home in Ard Patrick in Glenties that Donegal would be Ulster champions in his first year. He could see it.
But come June, Donegal were chasing shadows. They trailed 0-6 to 0-1 at one stage on the first half as the McGuinness revolution was being squatted by Tyrone and Harte’s evolution.
But there still were streaks of the new-found desire in the jersey McGuinness and his assistant Rory Gallagher had been installing.
After an initial sloppy pass, Anthony Thompson showed incredible resolution to scamper 80 yards to block at Stephen O’Neill’s feet as he shot for goal. It was a sound-byte of what the Donegal players were willing to do.
That excellent piece of play was supplemented with Kevin Cassidy’s galvanising point that took Donegal back to within two points down, 0-6 to 0-4, at half-time.
Donegal’s levels of economy were startling. Four scores from five efforts compared to Tyrone’s six from 18 read the half-time statistics.
And they further eroded the Tyrone lead in the second half, as those training sessions – some bordering on the sadistic – proved the fuel tank was far from empty.
McGuinness had been saying all winter and spring: “No team in Ireland has trained as hard as we have tonight.”
[adrotate group=”79″]Tyrone and Donegal were level just over the allotted 70 minutes of the rustle and bustle of the Ulster championship semi-final; as grid-locked as their supporters would have expected to be as they planned to undertake a similar route home.
Michael Murphy dispossessed Martin Swift and set Dermot Molloy free. A predator, Molloy ignored the shouts to take the easy option and drove underneath Pascal McConnell.
“I was just screaming at him to put it over, but he just wellied it,” Rory Kavanagh would later say.
Goal.
[adrotate group=”61″]“The type of player I am, I’ll always go for the goal in that situation,” Molloy said. “It was a fantastic feeling; getting the winning goal was very special.”
Donegal won 2-6 to 0-9. It was a crossroads moment for Donegal football. And for Tyrone.
“The way the year was going, it was a huge goal,” Molloy added. “The belief probably wasn’t there until that day we beat Tyrone.
“Tyrone were dominant at that time. Most of them had won three All-Irelands. If we’d lost that day, God knows what would’ve happened after that.”
Perhaps more off-the-record than on it, Neil McGee, following the post-match interviews behind the Gerry Arthurs Stand, summed it up perfectly: “If that game was a few years ago we’d have got hammered.”
Five years and six summers on, Donegal are now in their sixth Ulster final in succession and Tyrone still haven’t made the decider since 2010.
“The longer that game went on, and the longer we stayed in it, the confidence grew within us and lucky enough we got the victory that day and we didn’t look back,” Donegal defender Frank McGlynn recalled this week.
Donegal, who hadn’t won the Anglo-Celt Cup since 1992, have won it three times since that day in 2011 – as well as appearing in two All-Ireland finals and taking Sam Maguire back to the crackling umbrellas in the Diamond in Donegal town one wet September night in 2012.
With so much of the McGuinness era – particularly the first two years – built on belief and momentum, it’s fair to wonder what would’ve become of Donegal football had Tyrone held out in 2011. The entire footballing landscape and even the culture has changed in Donegal since – no longer in possession of the tag of ‘like-able losers.’
That 2011 win also began a run of dominance for Donegal over their neighbours that they’ve not reneged on since. Margins, though, have always been thin.
A year later, in 2012, Donegal won 0-12 to 0-10 in the Ulster semi-final with Paul Durcan having to make a miraculous save in the fourth of three minutes of injury time to deny Martin Penrose.
[adrotate group=”70″]“Saturday’s Ulster semi-final was as frenetic as an ice hockey match but it was also as deliberate as a game of chess,” wrote Ballyshannon native Keith Duggan in The Irish Times.
Then, in 2013, Donegal, by now All-Ireland champions, scored goals at the right time through Colm McFadden and Ross Wherity to seal a 2-10 to 0-10 preliminary round win in Ballybofey.
Twelve months ago, with Rory Gallagher in charge, Martin McElhinney’s goal on the stroke of half-time cancelled out Darren McCurry’s opener. And with Tyrone’s Sean Cavanagh and Neil Gallagher of Donegal sent off late in the match, it was Donegal who wrestled their way through on a 1-13 to 1-10 scoreline.
“They were going for their third Ulster title in a row in 2011,” Rory Gallagher said. “No one would have seen how it has since transpired – that they wouldn’t have got back to a final since.”
Mark McHugh added: “We’ve been lucky enough since 2011 to get the better of Tyrone. Every day you go out is a different story. We’ve just been marginally better than them the last few years, and that’s what we’ll have to be this weekend again.”
[adrotate group=”46″]Sunday’s final is seen by many as the role reverse to 2011. It was a clear punctuation point in football in the province. Tyrone want to create a new one at St Tiernach’s Park.
Donegal are now the dominant force in the province; Tyrone the team making up the most ground. Both might even have aspirations of making serious inroads in the All-Ireland series.
“We always felt that if we could do our work and get to the final it was always likely it was going to be Tyrone waiting,” Rory Gallagher added. “That’s the way it’s turned out.
“It’s an occasion we’ve got used to but never taken for granted. It’s a very special thing to be Ulster champions.”
The All-Ireland series can wait for now.
That’s because Croke Park always comes after Clones in Ulster.
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