KEITH DUGGANreflects on a time in the 1990s when Derry and Donegal were dominant forces – but neither has won an Ulster title since 1998

THEY WERE dog days. Donegal and Derry only met on three July Sundays in the 1990s but they were on each other’s minds for most of that decade. 1992 promised everything for Derry. They were National League champions and promptly stunned All-Ireland champions Down in their opening Ulster championship game. And they had Eamonn Coleman, whose twinkling eyes and absolute confidence in his team seemed to signal a new Derry. That Donegal had even made it back to the final, a year after being demoralised by the speed and wit of Down, was a surprise.

Brian McEniff’s Donegal team had been considered a busted flush after that game. They had lost the Ulster final of 1989, a bruising All-Ireland semi-final to Meath a year later before Down stripped them bare. Their chance had come and gone and although they had made it back to the big stage of know-how and bravery, the smart money was on Derry.

But instead, Donegal enjoyed their finest hour. It finished 0-14 to 1-9 and not even the unfair dismissal of Donegal defender John Cunningham for a clumsy challenge on Dermot McNicholl nor the awarding of a Derry goal that was clearly in the square could knock them off their stride. Brian Murray knocked over the grace note from 40 metres and just like that, they were liberated.

Everything had changed when they met on July 19th, 1993. To everyone’s astonishment, the Donegal men kept winning, discarding history and expectation by defeating Mayo and Dublin and claiming the All-Ireland title.

Derry watched, convinced their neighbours had somehow usurped what was their rightful path. It rained that day and it did not stop. St Tiernach’s Park in Clones had undergone renovations and there were rumours all week the pitch was not right. By midday, Clones was experiencing cataclysmic rainfall. Supporters standing on the grassy knoll across from the Arthurs Stand discovered if they lost their footing, they would slide down the entire bank. Soon, that grass on the bank turned into mud. On the pitch, the water began to gather.

John O’Keeffe journeyed from Kerry for his first Ulster final and was able to safely declare afterwards it was the “worst surface I have ever seen”. He described also the sickening sound of cracking bone as one of the Derry minor players broke his leg sliding across the surface. Everyone in the ground expected the senior game to be postponed but the Ulster Council held firm. What transpired was one of the most remarkable football matches in the history of the championship, at once magnificent and terrible.

The skills level of both teams – this was when players like Henry Downey, Brian McGilligan, Joe Brolly of Derry and Donegal’s Tony Boyle, John Duffy and Barry McGowan were in their prime – was negated. Instead, it became a grim battle of wills and neither team blinked. They didn’t score much either. It was 0-5 to 0-4 at half-time. Derry managed to win without scoring for 32 minutes. Donegal managed just a free from Duffy in that period.

Donegal perhaps paid the price for a brilliant league season; they had played sparkling football throughout the spring before losing a gruelling league final after a replay to Dublin. By July, several of their key players were carrying injuries. But Derry had waited a full year for this day.

The performance of Anthony Tohill was worth the admission price for the cursed who turned up. They got to witness in the flesh what became an emblematic image of that period – Tohill in a muddied and soaked red and white jersey driving with perfect poise through the heart of the madness, raindrops and Donegal men bouncing off him, the Swatragh man oblivious to both. It finished 0-8 to 0-6.

“We were beaten fairly but that game should never have been played,” Martin McHugh said afterwards. “It was too dangerous.”

Brian McEniff captured the uneasy mood of the day when he recalled the last minutes of Donegal’s reign as champions. “As for the incident at the end, I went out on to the pitch because I thought that Derry were trying to slow things down and we needed to keep things moving. I didn’t realise that Manus Boyle was about to be put off. Then some guy made for the linesman and I tried to stop. After the full-time whistle, I was assaulted twice as I left the field.”

Derry were free. Coleman was cock-a-hoop, standing in the deluge and reminding pressmen he had predicted this in Newry. There was a sense of manifest destiny about Derry and Coleman that day. They would make no mistake.

The lottery of the draw kept the counties apart for a full five years after that. By July 20th, 1998, much had changed. McEniff and Coleman, colossal figures in both counties, no longer manned the sideline (although both would return in the following decade). Both teams had had mixed fortunes since sparking so memorably off one another, capable of occasionally brilliant raids in the Ulster championship. But within both counties was a lingering disappointment they had had talent enough to win more than one All-Ireland.

By 1998, the championship teams of both sides had begun to break up and new names and faces – McGonigle in Derry, Devenney in Donegal – had begun to break through. Declan Bonner, star of the class of 1992, was the manager. Brian Mullins, the Dublin great, called the shots on the Derry sideline. As always, there was nothing in it.

It was level at 0-7 apiece edging towards injury-time and Donegal were the aggressors, pushing for a winner. Brendan Devenney tried a speculative point which sailed narrowly wide. Just before that, Dungiven’s Geoffrey McGonigle had come into the game. Derry’s Eoin McCloskey took a quick kick-out which Tohill claimed. He turned and saw the Dungiven man. Geoffrey was big and suede- headed and he had the balance of a gymnast and he batted the ball down into space and flicked a pass all in the one motion. The pass was for the old joker, Joe Brolly. Joe knew what to do. Goal. Kisses to the crowd. Game over.

“I like getting him scores. He’s a nice fella,” laughed Geoffrey afterwards.

Henry Downey put the win in context.

“A bit like 1993, although the pitch was not as bad. Maybe we had scores to settle from then.”

Few would have guessed that day it would be the last Ulster title for either county.

Fewer still would have guessed that the northern football landscape would be dominated utterly by Armagh and Tyrone. Donegal and Derry, the old brigade, watched from the wings, like everyone else. Tomorrow is their reunion.

Only now are they only beginning to understand the importance of those three days in the 1990s. They would have been nothing without each other.