RORY GALLAGHER KNOWS a thing or two about precision and being a dead-eyed forward.
After all, he was the top scorer in the Ulster Championship three summers running and one early-summer afternoon he hit Monaghan for 3-9 while in the colours of Fermanagh.
That 3-9 haul in Clones, including a second-half hat-trick of goals is one that still stands as a record to this day.
Now managing Donegal, Gallagher possesses one of the game’s most feared front men in Michael Murphy, though it is a rarity these days for the Donegal talismas to spend much time on the edge of the square.
[adrotate group=”53″]Gallagher has another connundrum this weekend as he prepares to face Monaghan, with another player regarded as one of the best in the business – Conor McManus.
Against Down, McManus hit eight points and he will surely have been roused by the news that Donegal full-back Neil McGee will sit out this weekend’s semi-final in Cavan.
In the Ulster final last year, when McManus’ lethal prowess was laid bare, he prodded a finger into the chest of McGee after one inspired point. The absence of that tussle deprives the customers of one of the big attractions of this now annual meeting.
“He is an 85/90 per cent shooter,” Gallagher says of McManus.
“He doesn’t give you a second opportunity from play or from frees. He has to be tightly marked. We have done fairly well on him considering what he has done to other teams.
“We have to stop a lot of the ball getting to him. It is an easy thing to say that Conor is a huge threat but to be fair to Monaghan they have developed over the last few years and they have a lot of qualities apart from Conor.
“He is up there. It’s for other people to decide who is the best but we would rank him in the top one per cent of footballers in the country, there is no doubt about that.
“He is a marquee forward, he has delivered on big occasions consistently, his free-taking is top drawer. He is a huge threat.”
For Donegal to advance into what would be their sixth successive Ulster final, they will have to curb McManus’ influence significantly.
[adrotate group=”70″]Donegal were punished for 11 second-half wides in the 2015 Ulster final, on a day when McManus’ six points were key as Monaghan clung on for dear life to take a 0-11 to 0-10 win and prise back the Anglo-Celt.
Revenge is not a dish Gallagher has on his menu.
He says: ”It is not a factor. We can’t turn the clock back ever.
“You have to take it on the chin. It wasn’t nice, it wasn’t a nice feeling.
“The right or wrongs of it? Monaghan were the better team, they got over the line. They didn’t miss the chances, we did. There is no doubt that it is a big game in both teams progression.
[adrotate group=”46″]“In the rivalry, they have two wins to our one so from that point of view they have had the better of it, and you can slot a couple of league victories that they have had as well into that as well. Either way, it is a huge game for both teams.”
Gallagher is now in his second year as the Donegal manager. His first fell on a day when Donegal could and perhaps should have won Ulster.
His team feels patched up in quarters, but, still with that ruthless look he had on that Sunday in 2002 when he blasted Monaghan for 3-9, the Belleek native insists that his team can compete for the Ulster title again.
He says: “There is no doubt about it, we feel we’re good enough. But we have to get to the final first. To do that we have to beat Monaghan.
[adrotate group=”68″]“We knew that this was going to be a defining game in the season. But there is no doubt that we want to win the Ulster title and that remains the aim.”
McManus and Murphy are both considered in that ‘top one per cent’ of footballers.
Given the deployment of Murphy is unlikely to be similar to that of McManus, it won’t be a straight shootout between them, but you can still say with reasonable certainty that whichever of them comes out on top in Cavan should be on the winning side.
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