Derry get nod to retain title

JOE BROLLY'S much reported quip about another Derry Donegal final being "boring, boring" had some validity. It's not just the 24 years since a League final pairing was repeated in successive seasons, nor the regularity with which the two counties play each other, nor even the largely familiar personnel.

It's all the above, together with the consistency of the two counties in the 1990s. Unlike the other All Ireland winners from Ulster, the more mercurial Down, tomorrow's finalists have been perennial contenders for the League.

League finals depend for their allure on new counties or even new teams breaking through and giving some indication of their potential. Although both counties are prone to feuding when things go wrong, it's not certain that losing tomorrow will constitute a setback of a sufficiently cataclysmic nature.

Donegal and Derry come to this year's National Football League final, sponsored by Church & General, well known and well drilled. Whatever happens tomorrow will not - directly - define their season.

Derry have the better panel of players, even allowing for the current plague of injuries on the half forward line, but it is not so superior that they cannot lose to a more motivated Donegal. So?

Last year, Donegal had the distraction of the upcoming championship opener with Down whereas the same fixture is less pressing this year. They have also lost two recent League finals but losing is as likely to become a depressing habit as constitute an irresistible impulse to succeed.

Derry aren't bereft of motivation either. Apart from the obvious fact that once in a League final, you might as well win it as lose it, the team are under new management. This creates its own dynamic. Firstly, the new order will be less keenly aware that previous League success has ended in championship tears and secondly, the opportunity to win a first national competition is quite inviting.

Brian Mullins and company can help Derry equal Dublin's sequence of a League title in the first year of three successive managements.

On the field, there are a couple of variations on last year's final. Derry look sharper in a couple of respects the defence is more considered and Joe Brolly's exceptional form in the right corner of the attack has given them far more menace. The devastation on the half forward line isn't as debilitating as it appears.

There are still chances that Gary McGill and Dermot Heaney will be.fit when final judgement is passed on their fitness today. Otherwise, Eamonn Burns, a competent and experienced player, and even younger talents such as Dermot Dougan are available.

As long as this Derry team has been around, they have tended to rely more for scores on Anthony, Tohill at midfield than on the half forwards. With Tohill rapidly finding his form after injury - he took 1-9 out of 1-11 for his club at the weekend - that source looks intact.

At the back, Derry are tighter and more controlled. The defence remains technically one of the best capable of effective marking without fouling. The full back position is still a problem with newcomer David O'Neill unavailable.

Gary Coleman's comical posting on the edge of the square notwithstanding, Tony Scullion is likely to move to full back with Coleman switching to the left corner. In fact, given that his best position is wing back, Coleman may move out to the half line with Karl Diamond dropping back.

In the semi final against Cork, Donegal were blessed by John Ban Gallagher's late point. This isn't to say that anything other than a win for them wouldn't have been a travesty but having squandered chances throughout the second hall, they had been caught in injury time and could have been facing a replay.

There was a worrying resurgence of old failings; the compulsion to courier the ball up the pitch, compounded by some shocking inaccuracy.

A year ago, Donegal seemed to have got the hang of varying their game between long and short ball tactics. Two weeks ago, the reversion to an exclusively short game total. This is quite surprising given the strength of the full forward line, where Tony Boyle's strength and bravery on the ball has been complemented by the arrival of Brian Roper, whose speed and elusiveness in the semi final looked in need of nothing more than a fine day.

Manus Boyle in the other corner needs early ball to keep him interested and at present, his mood doesn't look much improved by the free kick deprivation therapy currently on prescription.

It's possible to sympathise with the desire to get more out of Manus, but he seems a bit old for radical reform. It's also possible that taking the frees keeps him ticking over. Certainly, refusal to hand him back the duties has not resulted in any manifest increase in his taste for the general Tray.

The other and more crucial consideration is that he is a better free taker than Tony Boyle - as comparisons between the team's past and present performances in the area indicate.

Further back, the team looks competitive. James Ruane has excited hopes that he might be a long term prospect for midfield and although Brian Murray's game more naturally lends itself to moving forward, he has used his football intelligence to improvise well as anchorman in the sector.

Defence was solid against Cork but the concern that moves JJ Doherty over to mark Brolly will be well tested over the afternoon.

One asset Donegal have always possessed is the capacity to come back from defeat and confound gloomier assessment of their prospects. Last year's defeat has created an incentive and the semi final gave plenty of scope for gloomy assessment, but despite these encouraging precedents, Derry get the nod to make two in a row.

. Tipperary hurler John Leahy is to face trial in Manchester Crown Court on July 11th, accused of a serious wounding offence in a nightclub in the city at the beginning of the year. He was released on renewed bail pending the trial on a surety of £10,000.

Leahy has pleaded not guilty and also denies an alternative charge of unlawfully wounding Limerickman Stephen Downey in the Garden Hotel in Manchester on January 14th.