I would make my way from Malin to Bundoran through Raphoe / Or Portsalon down to Killybegs, by Creeslough and Dungloe / I'd wander round by Barnesmore Gap, on everyone I'd call / There beyond the Bluestack Mountains in the town of Donegal
- Daniel O’Donnell
Mum arrived late to an underage match of mine one summer’s evening in Dungloe. My family had moved there a few years before, in 1992, when Sam was in the hills and Daniel was on Top of the Pops. She found the auld fella on the sideline with a friend and another man. She asked the auld fella where I was and he said I was down by the goals wearing number 14. “OK so what does that mean?” she asked. “That’s Tony’s position,” said the auld fella’s mate. “Who’s Tony?” asked Mum. “This man here,” he said, introducing the next man over. Later on that evening Mum realised she must’ve been the only person in the northwest, never mind Dungloe, who didn’t know Dungloe’s All Star All Ireland winner Tony Boyle.
This was football country. We learnt quick enough. A year or so after that match, football and soccer clashed, with matches for both my Dungloe teams on the same evening. I’d decided I was going with the foreign game. I was at school that day, playing soccer at lunchtime, when I saw my football manager, John Anthony in his slacks and sweater vest, get out of his car and walk across the green towards the tarmac pitch I was playing on. “C’mere Eoghan, I’ve heard about this soccer match this evening.” In my naivete I told him, “Ah yeah, sorry, I won’t be able to make Gaelic tonight." “Here listen,” he told me, 11 years old, “If you play soccer tonight you’ll not play football in this town again.” Right so, fair enough, I thought.
Back at home after school and the auld fella came home early from work to ask if John Anthony had come to see me. He’d called into the auld fella in the bank too, gave him the same spiel, said there’d be problems if I and a teammate made the wrong choice of code like we were threatening. Not knowing how to convince me to pick Gaelic and save my career, the auld fella recognised I had a price, a few days before our family holiday to France, and paid me 100 francs to play football. My teammate made the same choice and ended up playing a bit for the Donegal seniors. (I didn’t.)
'His team and county on his back'
However you come to learn the importance of football in Donegal it’ll give you good days. Back in 2002 the family got in the car and left Ballyshannon to head to Croke Park to see Donegal in the All Ireland quarter final against the favoured Dublin. That garage in Cavan along the way, about equidistant from Ballyshannon and Dublin, was all yellow and green. Jesus what has you going down to Dublin today?
Getting to the front of the queue for the flat-out deli was a job. One man was too late for what he wanted. “I’ll have a sausage and rasher roll,” he said. “We’ve no rashers and no sausages,” said the girl behind. “Ah dead on, I’ll have a rasher and sausage sandwich so,” he said. Fuck me the garage laughed.
Playing top of the right was Dungloe’s Adrian Sweeney. Every time he picked it up an auld buck in the Canal End behind me, no matter where Sweeney gained possession, no matter how he was marked, would roar, “Now Sweeney ya girl ya, over the fuckin’ bar with it.” And he was right to roar it. This was in the days before percentage football and Sweeney was a gunslinger. Half a yard or so of space and inside the 45 and he was happy, with good reason for his confidence, to throw a leg at it.
That day in Croke Park he and Brendan Devenney, who’s now spending his time on HQ’s sidelines hassling Micheál Martin about his government’s refusal to sort out visas for young Palestinian Gaelic games players, gave a near-perfect display of inside forward play, nine points between them. It almost wasn’t enough. Donegal were a point down with a few minutes to go.
Sweeney, number 13 as well as his team and county on his back, collected a hopeful ball from midfield out on the right and sized up his marker, Coman Goggins, who’d had an awful time of it all game trying to live with him. Sweeney took him on and threw him to the ground like he was nothing, left him on his arse, looking up as Sweeney carried the ball towards goal and considered a pass inside before pulling back, slightly, and fisting it over the bar. Sweeney walked to the Hill, stopped and addressed it – how d’youse like that – and returned to position with a wee smirk on his face. There’d be another day out in Dublin for the replay.
On the drive home and passing through Monaghan, lads outside pubs saw our Donegal reg and flag and shouted Up Donegal, the auld fella laying on the horn. The popular telling of the days that followed that match has it that the team went on the beer for most the week and showed up to Croke Park to get beaten off the pitch in the rematch. Since Donegal laid off the drink and started winning, at least a little bit, neutrals like those lads outside the pubs in Monaghan don’t like us as much. The relationship between Donegal and the rest of the country is more complicated.
'My county doesn’t have to answer to anyone in Dublin Castle'
I was in Dublin Castle the day of the results of the eighth amendment referendum. A good day, but when people heard I’m from Donegal, the only county to vote No to repealing the amendment, they had jokes. Donegal says No and so on.
There was a fair bit I could say: that Donegal had been split and the south’s votes were counted in Sligo, that if these votes had been included the county actually would’ve returned a Yes; that we’re among the most disadvantaged of counties, that many of our younger voters had either left and voted elsewhere or found it hard to make it back up the road; that a county as isolated as Donegal will feel less connection to national movements and sentiment.
But I didn’t. Because I wasn’t arsed. And I didn’t care. My county doesn’t have to answer to anyone in Dublin Castle. And sure if these people, with their jokes, are that put off by us, maybe, they’ll stay home during the summers and not be annoying our heads on our beaches, blushing at our accents.
When The Ditch got attorney general Paul Gallagher’s advice to government on the defective block crisis it disgusted me. That’s not hyperbole nor do I expect anyone to be moved by my disgust. At this stage I don’t think many in the county expect the rest of the country to empathise. Would they be saying this about any other county. No they wouldn’t.
With houses in the county falling down around the people who live in them, the attorney general was telling government to distrust the people of Donegal, speaking in the same tones as all those down the country who sneer at what they consider the mansions on the coast.
“Any applicant will pitch his/her claim on the most generous basis that can be credibly advanced,” he said. “It is not apparent to me what mechanisms are in place to ensure the correct standard is applied and that these betterment costs are not claimed in some implicit way,” he said. “Furthermore, as night follows day, if a significant number of homeowners are being recompensed on a demolition basis, it is inconceivable this will not encourage most other homeowners to submit claims on that basis,” he said, the Free State company man with the property portfolio worth at least €8.5 million. Government listened to him. Donegal families affected by the crisis still wait.
Would they be saying this about any other county. No they wouldn’t.
It's just class
Back in 1992 when Donegal won our first All Ireland the team travelled back to Donegal by train. The decision to go by rail, which allowed manager Brian McEniff a photo opportunity outside one of his hotels, required the team to go from Dublin to Sligo. They renamed an larnód Eireann executive train Express Sam. Great. They won’t give us trains though. Thousands showed up in Sligo to meet the team. They got into their cars and followed the team over the border.
It was something else.
“At one stage I looked back and could see nothing but miles and miles of cars following us. There were bonfires in big barrels at the Donegal border. Molloy and McEniff got out and walked into Donegal. It was something else to witness it. It was the first time Donegal men had brought Sam Maguire to Donegal,” said midfielder Brian Murray, a Ballyshannon man, in Dónal Campbell and Damian Dowd’s Sam’s for the Hills.
Highland Radio’s Charlie Collins, who only retired last year, was there to see that walk just before 11pm. “Everybody went fairly quiet, the two boys were going to walk across Bundrowes Bridge into Donegal. It was dark outside, we could see the bonfires burning on the Donegal side of the border. We watched as they walked into Donegal with the cup and everybody – I mean players, their wives, girlfriends, selectors, county board people, the physio, the doctor, Seamus Marley the bus driver – had tears in their eyes,” he said.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been around the county, in Glencolmcille, in Bundoran, there beyond the Bluestack Mountains in the town of Donegal, and it turns out I love flags. It’s special to see them and the expectation they represent flying this late in the championship. I was having a pint in Dublin last week with a few friends. One of them’s from Donegal. She asked me what I thought about Donegal’s run, that we’re in an All Ireland final. “Ah it’s class isn’t it,” I said. “Yeah it’s just class,” she said.
