IT IS OVER THREE years ago now since Mickey Harte spoke powerful, passionate words about the meaning of a Championship game against Donegal.
Tyrone were, to paraphrase Alex Ferguson, knocked from their perch by Donegal, who’d defeated the Red Hands in Ulster semi-finals in 2011 and 2012.
As if to increase the flames in Harte’s stomach, Donegal were holders of Sam Maguire when he took Tyrone to Ballybofey that May afternoon in 2013.
“We see it as a collective effort and, collectively, we owe Donegal a defeat in the Championship,” Harte said before they danced again in 2013.
Tyrone lost again that day. Colm McFadden and Ross Wherity netted in a 2-10 to 0-10 win for Donegal, at the time Ulster and All-Ireland champions.
Another defeat followed last May when Donegal again wore Tyrone down and won 1-13 to 1-10.
Harte had snapped two months earlier when he saw Tyrone beaten 1-13 to 0-7 in the League, a result that proved fatal in terms of Tyrone’s hopes of avoiding relegation from Division One.
“I said to the players afterwards that this was as bad a performance as I have been involved with from a Tyrone team over all the time I have been involved, at any level, and at any age,” was Harte’s assessment.
Still they wait for that victory Harte said in 2013 they ‘owed’ to Donegal.
Make no mistake, Jim McGuinness was spot on when he wrote last week in The Irish Times that this game was like an All-Ireland final. To these counties, this is everything. The Holy Grail and more, in fact.
There has always been something spicy between the counties. Damian Dowds and Donal Campbell wrote in Sam’s For The Hills of a replay defeat to Tyrone in the Ulster final of 1989: “The rivalry that was born in Clones that July was immense and dark, particularly among the supporters. A dislike, perhaps mutual, swept Clones.
“Two tribes went to war and a ceasefire has still to be declared.”
Don’t hold your breath waiting.
Donegal and Tyrone last went to war in the Ulster final in July 1989. The teams were level the first day out.
[adrotate group=”79″]After the teams were level eight times, Tommy Ryan put Donegal ahead in injury time, only for Stephen Conway to level it with the last kick of the game.
Back they came a week later.
Conway netted an early penalty and Damien O’Hagan struck a second goal as Tyrone won 2-13 to 0-7, a defeat that ended Tom Connaghan’s reign as the Donegal manager.
Connaghan took a sideswipe at Tyrone’s supporters afterwards: “I must express my anger at the behaviour of a number of Tyrone supporters. I was along the sideline and I could hear the obscene chanting that the Donegal supporters were subjected to. I think their behaviour was the next best thing to hooliganism.”
[adrotate group=”78″]Even that paled into insignificance in comparison to the game in Ballybofey in 1973. Such was the nature of that one, Donegal officials considered moving to compete in the Connacht Championship.
Neilly Gallagher was hospitalised after taking an off-the-ball blow while cans, bottles and all sorts were thrown from the terraces.
Ask them around the Finn Valley or on the banks of the Mourne, Finn or Derg rivers about the conflicts.
The feelings run deep.
Time was when the good folk of east Donegal would have to traipse the winding roads through places like Killeter, Aghyaran or Castlederg to be goaded, sneered at – if they were lucky – on the way home from defeats in Irvinestown or Clones.
They’d have to endure ignominy of the jeering from the streets or witness the attempted humour in the form of painted messages scrawled on the backs of donkeys, goats or whatever form of livestock was at hand. It stuck in the throat.
[adrotate group=”78″]Tyrone got under the skin like no other.
And still do.
This weekend, the teams are at battle and there’ll be families at war.
That their battles have written some of the defining chapters of recent summer stories has helped keep the flames alive.
From the day and hour the draw was made for the 2011 Championship, Jim McGuinness had Tyrone on his radar.
Rory Kavanagh, who has since returned to the Donegal squad and who is likely to play this Sunday, recalled the meaning last year before the swords crossed.
[adrotate group=”43″]“There was a reference to Tyrone most nights,” Kavanagh said.
“He knew in his heart of hearts that we’d get over the line against Antrim that first day out. He just knew that we’d take care of that game.
“Jim would’ve studied Mickey Harte’s system and looked at it in-depth.
“In my early career, Armagh was always the team we hated meeting because there was just this mental block there when we played them. They just used to wear us down and invariably hammer us.
“When Jim came in there was no word of Armagh. It was all about Tyrone. They’d won Ulster back-to-back. He knew that game was going to happen so he had Tyrone drilled into us.”
[adrotate group=”53″]Donegal did indeed get over Antrim, but the only fuss that was made thereafter was about how poor the fare had been. Cavan were dispatched and Tyrone came into focus for an Ulster semi-final at Clones. Donegal meant business.
Kevanagh says: “Jesus, there was pressure that day. We knew what it meant. To add to it all, there was that real white heat in Clones. It was hot and humid.
“We had done nothing before that game; we hadn’t made a statement. Tyrone were full of a swagger, sort of: ‘We’ll put manners into these boys’.”
By the 28th minute, Tyrone were leading 0-6 to 0-1 and they’d planted the seeds of doubt. Donegal had won Division 2 of the League, but they’d seen promising springs fall asunder at Tyrone’s hands before.
[adrotate group=”38″]When Brian McIver guided Donegal to Division 1 glory in 2007 and followed it up with a rare win over Tir Chonaill’s nemesis, Armagh, the optimism rose.
When they met Tyrone in Clones, the bubble burst. Ryan McMenamin stood grinning holding the pin. That afternoon, during a break in play, McMenamin could be heard clearly: “We have them, we have them. They can’t handle it.”
Donegal couldn’t. They were handed their coats and shown the door by Tyrone. When Colm McFadden was sent off having caught Brian Dooher with a cracking right cross, the misery was completed.
With half-an-hour gone in 2011, Donegal could see a familiar film playing before his eyes.
Some of the more sharp memories of the McGuinness era should come from those meetings with Tyrone. In 2011, Anthony Thompson, while deep in opposition territory, conceded possession with a sloppy pass and Tyrone seemed set to punish them to the maximum.
[adrotate group=”46″]As Stephen O’Neill pulled the trigger, a magnificent block came in to deny him a goal. Having sprinted the lung-testing 80 metres, Thompson was at the rescue.
When Kevin Cassidy arched over a fabulous point, Donegal were just two behind at the break. In the dressing room of a baking St Tiernach’s Park, Cassidy took to the floor. Days earlier he’d called it ‘the biggest game of our lives…a game that will make or break us’. At half-time, the Gaoth Dobhair man urged his men: ‘If this becomes a battle, we know we have the legs for them’.
McGuinness lost it at half-time that day. The pressure was weighing them all down.
Donegal needed to stay in the game and Cassidy’s point was right on cue.
McFadden – who famously kicked 1-7 in 2004 when Donegal lowered Tyrone’s colours at a time when they were Ulster and All-Ireland champions – scored a goal in the 55th minute to put his side ahead for the first time.
[adrotate group=”70″]Leo McLoone, on as a sub in the second half, was perhaps fortunate to escape the ultimate sanction just moments after his introduction for a high hit on Joe McMahon. The sledging and the personal muck flew in all directions – as it normally did when their paths crossed.
The mercury soared and it remained at boiling point until Donegal finally sealed the win, two minutes into stoppage time.
Michael Murphy’s sheer strength held off two Tyrone challenges and, as he fell, the captain hoisted the ball towards Dermot Molloy, who elected not to pop it over the bar. Instead, he shot low and, while Pascal McConnell, the Tyrone goalkeeper, got a touch, Molloy had sufficient power behind his effort to carry it home.
It was a day that would prove one of the key wins of the McGuinness era. A big scalp was among the pins on his tunic now. A few weeks later, a first Ulster title in 19 years was making its way through the bonfires by the Donegal roadsides.
[adrotate group=”37″]A year later they were back for another duel. The setting was the same and so, too, was the outcome. Donegal prevailed, but only just. Down to fourteen men – McFadden having been given a second yellow – they were leading by just two points when Tyrone launched one, last attempt at salvation.
Martin Penrose appeared to have stolen the win for Tyrone until, from somewhere came Paul Durcan’s left foot to divert the ball onto the upright and wide.
One of the abiding images from 2013 is of O’Neill’s attempt at shouldering Neil McGee only to merely bounce back off the Gaoth Dobhair colossus.
If McGuinness’s response to Harte pre-game in 2013 is anything to go by, Donegal’s thirst still hasn’t been quenched.
Three years ago, he said: “If you look at recent history, we probably owe them a couple more before it gets level.”
Sunday is more than just a game.
This is, as Ted Turner once reckoned, war without the killing.
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