SIX ULSTER FINALS in a row. How did that happen? Time flies when you’re having fun. Right?
Donegal’s recent period of success is now officially an ‘era’. But is this era coming to an end? Is it still going strong, despite frequent reports of its demise? Or are we at the beginning of another era — another Tyrone era?
That’s what Sunday is all about.
An era is something that happens when you’re busy making other plans. Just ask Mickey Harte. Tyrone have had to endure four Ulster championship defeats in five seasons at the hands of Donegal. No matter what else was happening, Donegal made sure to keep beating Tyrone. It was like a psychological device: as long as we’re better than them, we’re not too far away.
It worked inversely for Tyrone: as long as they kept losing to Donegal, the laboured transition period after their All-Ireland-winning years was incomplete. Suddenly five Ulster finals had gone by without them. Unthinkable.
The funny thing about the current Donegal era is that people have been saying it was about to end since shortly after it started. With their hard-running style and a reliance on a core of players that predated Jim McGuinness’s stewardship, it’s a team that was consistently diagnosed as having too many miles on the clock. But the wins — 18 in 21 provincial games played since 2011 — and the Ulster final appearances are still racking up.
Admittedly, they’ve had something of a facelift: a nip of some young McHughs here, a tuck of Odhran MacNiallais there, an injection of Marty O’Reilly into the forehead. The rest of them are slightly balder, a bit crankier, a bit tighter in the shorts, but still fighting the good fight.
This Donegal run is bettered only by the historical daddies of Ulster football: Down’s 12 from the late 50s through to 1969, and various Cavan epochs, including 18 consecutive finals up to 1956.
Not that your average Donegal person would think of it in such imperial terms. None but the very young can have any sense of birthright about July Sundays in Clones. Donegal made just six Ulster finals in a century before 1989, which was the first of five appearances in a row wrapped around the glory of 1992. But such was Ulster’s competitiveness at the time — Down, Donegal and Derry shared four All-Irelands between 1991 and 1994 — that it wasn’t possible to lord it over others in the province.
Four provincial final appearances (all losses) in 17 seasons followed before the second coming of Jim McGuinness. He consistently placed the Anglo-Celt Cup in the same psychic sphere as the Sam Maguire, as if to have his players constantly steeled for the province’s trial by fire. This Donegal side have always been ready for Ulster, and even when struggling in 2013 and 2015, they managed to rouse themselves to smack down Tyrone, stagger through to a final, and go down fighting against Monaghan.
And suddenly it’s six-in-a-row.
Much has been made of the toxic build-up to this final, but it couldn’t be otherwise. This is an existential battle for both teams. Tyrone, though in transition, were hardly terrible throughout Donegal’s period of dominance. Two All-Ireland semi-finals and one quarter-final in five seasons suggest they kept their heads above water.
But this is Tyrone, one of the best-organised and best-supported counties in the game. How those four defeats to Donegal must have infuriated them! As a Donegal person, they seemed audacious, cheeky almost: We can’t expect to beat them AGAIN?! But we could, and we did.
And there’s been a touch of the Arsene Wengers about Harte. As with Wenger, faith in Harte was sorely tested as Tyrone drifted further and further from their glory years. Was it time to say thanks for everything and move on? Now he’s built his best team since the 2008 All-Ireland winners, a team many feel might even be capable of challenging Dublin for the big one. But that promise needs to be franked by an Ulster title, or like so many Arsenal teams of the last decade, they may be dismissed as showy pretenders.
Conversely, Donegal fear being outgunned by a Tyrone team built to hurt them. Mayo put Donegal to the sword in the past with their powerful runners from deep positions; Tyrone have these in spades. For Donegal, defeat on Sunday would mean a weary diversion to the qualifiers, a path proven to suck the life out of those overworked legs, and renewed questions about whether this golden chapter is finally at an end.
For this rumble, Donegal must hope Tyrone are George Foreman, and they Muhammad Ali. Tyrone have the firepower, but Donegal have the guile, and a punch of their own. They’ve made Clones their own like no Donegal team ever before, and they won’t want to hand over the keys to St Tiernach’s Park without a fight.
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