Afterwards, there was just relief. Derry fans swarmed the pitch in Clones and Anthony Tohill screamed in raw jubilation as Kieran McKeever thrust the silver against a gloomy skyline, but below in the dressing-room, the atmosphere was restrained.

Donegal players were down the corridor, devastated at the clinical and improbable swiftness of their downfall. Derry were Ulster champions again and Seamus Downey was just glad to be alive as a player. For the last eight minutes of the match, he sat drenched and leaden-hearted on the bench, watching his team-mates trudge woodenly through the drizzle and a defensive stalemate.

"I sat there thinking, `this could be how my career finishes' and I just wasn't prepared for it. It was awful because there was nothing I could do. From a personal perspective, my memories of the game are very mixed. The quality was poor and I was brought out as a third midfielder and proceeded to run around like a headless chicken. It was disappointing but thankfully the team did enough and we won."

Manager Brian Mullins stood amongst the discarded jerseys and mucky boots afterwards and quietly told them that they had vindicated themselves and that their win had been down to a squad effort.

The Dublin man seems to gel well with the Derry old timers and the skinny, crew-cut rising stars who are shaping their latest assault on the Championship. He still talks like a player and is fiercely protective of them.

"I suppose that having been the player he was, Brian finds it easy to identify with footballers. He was just what Derry football needed," says Downey.

"He is very influential, a dominant figurehead and he has shaped this team, is leaving his mark on them. He has brought something like nine new lads through - Joe Cassidy, young Johnny McBride, Paul McFlynn. Youth has been the catalyst for this."

Still though, for all the bright-eyed youthfulness, there is much of old Derry left in that team, plenty of lads with tales from the halcyon days of 1993 when Eamon Coleman famously proclaimed to the national scribblers that, "youse boys wouldn't believe us" after they had won the All-Ireland.

And who would have believed that the same side, fearsome and apparently poised to dominate the game, would spend the next four summers penned inside the Ulster border?

"Certainly at that time we would have found that hard to take in. I dunno, when we came to face Down in Celtic Park in 1994, it was all new to us, being champions. But the following year, we were determined to make a run again and everything just came apart with the whole Eamon Coleman affair.

"The team just disintegrated. This was a team built over three years, just wiped. We had doubts then and it took time to rebuild. Even against Cavan last year, we under-performed. I just feel sorry that there are lads like Tony Scullion, Brian McGilligan, Damien Barton and others that never got a real crack at things again after 1993. Wish they stuck it out a while longer."

Not that Downey feels their legacy is one of under-achievement. "We have three National League titles, two Ulster titles and an All-Ireland in this decade. I'm sure a lot of counties would settle for that. Maybe there is a little frustration that we took so long in winning Ulster again. But it demonstrates how difficult it is to get out of the province. That's why there was such pressure on us this year. If lost this time, it was the end."

Downey is a Lavey man, a remote Derry parish where the GAA pulses strongly. Virtually every young person there kicks football, hurls or plays camogie. Although it is often claimed that those exiled north of the border fasten themselves to the ethos of the organisation more fervently, Downey never really saw it like that.

He just loved the game, its rhythm and possibilities and the feverish encounters with teams from down the county. Damn well loved the winning. While Henry, his brother, was always impossibly neat and agile, Seamus's athleticism was more bone-jarring. He learned to thrive on honest graft.

"People talk about Joe Brolly a lot when it comes to Derry," says Donegal defender John Joe Doherty, "but you have to mention Seamus Downey in the same vein, because many of Brolly's scores come through him.

"He was on a hiding to nothing against us in the Ulster final, coming in after a great game against Armagh and I'd say he'll be looking for a big performance against Galway. He's fairly quick for a big man, doesn't use his physical presence as much as you'd think. He lays off ball well and takes his chances."

Which is the way they taught him. Back when he was a teenager, he ran with the Lavey seniors when his uncle, John Brennan, called the shots. When the parish toppled Newbridge in the 1988 county championship, fresh optimism danced before him. The club had talent and time to burn.

Brendan Convery, a thoughtful, impassioned orator, led them through scarcely credulous territory in the early 1990s, when they scalped the best in Ulster over three consecutive years and won out on St Patrick's Day of 1991 against Salthill. Golden years made legendary by Derry's awakening a few seasons on.

So the August training feels light to Seamus Downey. The talk is of Galway. Brolly and McKeever know some of the players from Dungiven's clash with Corofin last March and they have studied videos of the Connacht games and travelled down for the replay of the final.

"They play nice football, are extremely comfortable on the ball, and obviously have impressive forwards. I suppose as with most games, the midfield diamond will be critical. We'll just have to keep things tight and make sure we use our possession, as we did early on in the summer."

But you sense that he isn't pushed as to who they play now, that he's just glad Derry are still there. Still, the build up has been strange. Last Sunday, the squad met up for training and they shuffled through the motions with blank expressions. Omagh hit the province hard.

"We weren't fit to train. There is no way we could have played that day - to be honest I thought the games in Croke Park might have been called off. Obviously, it was absolutely horrific and with Omagh being so close and everything, it just hit home." The people of Lavey and nearby Bellaghy have suffered in the past. Both parishes lost respected, peaceful GAA men to sectarian violence. Deep down, playing the game in the north is slightly different. Just living there is not quite the same.

Tomorrow, Downey will silently acknowledge that along with everyone else in Croke Park. Maybe he'll offer brief well wishes to his brother before trotting down to face Gary Fahy. And then he will steel himself, ready to play and to make up on lost time.