Glory days. A gripping northwest power struggle finished with Derry, renewed and revived, returning as Ulster champions after an absence of almost a quarter of a century.
“It was just our time,” screamed Chrissy McKaigue after lifting the Anglo-Celt Cup in front of a red and white gallery stretched across the famous field. That felt about right. Donegal are old hands at these silverware days but in what was a breathless and hugely defensively oriented encounter, Derry hunted down this afternoon and were deserved winners in a slow-burning game that was at once infuriating and enthralling.
It finished 1-12 apiece at full-time and over the second 10-minute period of extra-time, Derry bolted for home. They were brighter and more hungry and brave in that period when the game needed to be won. Points – which resembled daring raids into enemy country – from fullback Brendan Rogers and midfielder Conor Glass pushed Derry into a clearing. Donegal laid siege on the Derry goal in a closing 60 seconds of unbearable drama but 14 Oak Leaf men blocked the goal when Michael Murphy attempted to save the game by blasting a last-gasp 13-metre free in the hope of a goal. They would not be denied and it ended 1-16 to 1-14.
It was a fabulous crowning moment for Rory Gallagher, who has transformed Derry football less than three years after taking charge. He was taking on a county with a fading tradition and a fractured inter-county reputation to the extent that much of the county’s pride seemed to reside in the flourishing club scene.
“I suppose delighted,” he said as boom-box – playing Brian Adams’s Heaven – was sparked up in the victor’s dressingroom.
“It was an epic way to win an Ulster championship and probably quite fitting. The drama, considering we played Tyrone, Monaghan and Donegal, who have owned us at championship, with the exception of Cavan, for the last 24 years. And for these players who are bound to have watched on with huge envy and jealousy and have looked on for the last six or seven years that they were not be part of it. So to win it the way we did: they showed character. Not a perfect display. But they had character.”
They had that in spades. Slaughtneil’s Rogers shadowed Donegal captain Murphy all day but was also a vital attacking cog, hitting 0-3 and leading his team through the demands of the second half. For Gallagher, the emergence of Derry’s senior players on the elite stage was the most pleasing aspect of the season.
“Unbelievable. He’s going toe to toe with Michael Murphy, the best player in Ulster by a mile, the best leader in Ulster and he is still able to play brilliantly. But Brendan eventually was able to get the better of it all and we knew Michael was going to play out the field and Brendan was going to have to punish it.
But like that, I am not taking away … Club football is a brilliant sport, a brilliant event and we all love going to it. But the elite level of it, and when I say elite, I mean county level, and when you say they have been successful at club football, that is not against all the best players. But seeing them go toe to toe, Chrissy … Gareth, Conor, Emmet, Ethan, to see them play at the very highest level, I am just delighted.”
In the lunchtime game, two first-half Galway goals allowed Pádraic Joyce’s team to keep Roscommon at arm’s length as they secured the Connacht championship by 2-19 to 2-16. The win flipped the result of the Division Two league final between the two sides. Maroon, then, and the red and white of Derry bring fresh colour to the summer as the championship picture begins to sharpen.
