Donegal move in mysterious ways

Ulster SFC Semi-final: Barry Monaghan was just arriving on the outskirts of Donegal Town, flicking through the drive-time radio shows when he heard the news about the transfer of the Ulster final to Croke Park.

Wednesday was one of those classically oppressive Northwest summer days, humid and overcast and by teatime drizzle was coming in across the Diamond, the commercial heart of the town.

Wipers squealing and American tourists walking around in oilskins were not the stuff of summer but the mere thought of Croke Park gave him a feeling of excitement and nerves and anticipation. Just hearing the name of the place quickened the pulse.

Last August Monaghan left the fabled stadium with a heavy heart and a swollen, bruised eye. Although his evolution as Donegal's first-choice centre back over the past two seasons has been so calm and solid as to be unnoticeable, he was involved in two definitive incidents in that evocative semi-final loss against Armagh.

He has bittersweet recollections of that afternoon. It ended with the greatest disappointment of his sporting life but there were moments, playing in front of 76,000 people, when the game was intoxicating. Although there is a video-tape lying in the house, he has never sat back to watch the match in full and so he has never seen the clash with Armagh's John McEntee that left him floored.

It was a crucial moment, coming in the last quarter of a game that was turned by what Donegal considered to be the harsh dismissal of full back Ray Sweeney. A more cynical player might have pressed the referee for similar retribution to be handed to his opponent but the thought did not enter Monaghan's mind. He spent the days afterwards walking around Donegal Town with a handsome shiner.

"Aye, but most of that was make-up," he laughed when reminiscing about the game in the Abbey Hotel. "In fairness to John, I think it was blown out of proportion. It was just one of those things and whatever the referee saw or didn't see, I don't know. John is a very strong, physical player and if it had been the other way around, I think he wouldn't have complained either.

"I went in to tackle him and he was trying to protect the ball. I heard a lot of people say it looked bad but it didn't knock my teeth out or break my jaw. Afterwards, we just shook hands and I wished him good luck in the final. I bore no ill will at all. It's just part of the rough and tumble, as they say."

His attitude towards that moment seems representative of the characteristics that govern the present Donegal team: good-natured, unassuming and essentially respectful of the bigger picture.

This year's Ulster championship mirrors the last days of the All-Ireland in September in that the same three teams are left: Armagh and Tyrone, the booming howitzers of the modern game, and Donegal, popularly portrayed as whooping cowboys packing deadly-accurate six-guns.

Although they have achieved some famous results in the past two seasons, Donegal remain a dark team, sometimes electrifying and sometimes appearing to be at odds with the very game itself.

In their opening-round victory against Antrim, both aspects were evident.

"I suppose there was a wee bit of nerves there all right. Like, even though we had a good run last summer, the memory of the first game against Fermanagh would have been lingering. We never handle the favourite's tag too well. And that game last year was just so disheartening. If there had been no back door, we would have gone down as one of the worst Donegal team's ever to play. And I'd say half of us would never have played again. So we were conscious of the first round and it took us a wee while to relax. Donegal can take a while to move up a gear anyhow. It's like there is a bad clutch running through the team."

He said that for fun but underneath was a serious point.

Tomorrow in Clones, people will know what to expect of Tyrone. The opposite is true of Donegal. The return of Brian McEniff and the subsequent through-the-looking-glass tale that began with league relegation and ended with a gallant All-Ireland semi-final established their reputation as an erratic, unknowable football team glittering with potential. The adventures of the previous year, when they pushed Dublin to the brink in the All-Ireland quarter-final and then went on a Bloom-like tour of the city, gave them a name for being cavalier.

Monaghan sighed at the mention of a tag that clung to the team so stubbornly they were left without a manager for months afterwards.

"Looking back at it, it was madness. I suppose we were not used to that situation, that kind of excitement. But that was two years ago. And I went home on the bus that night, where there was no drink whatsoever. And most of the players that started the game were on that bus too. The way the stories went about, it was like the lot of us woke up on O'Connell Bridge with our boots still on us and that kind of jazz. It was a mistake, definitely, and we learned from it. But these stories have a way of getting bigger too."

Monaghan had his own problems that time. In the first minutes of the draw, he wrenched a groin muscle and could hardly walk. Through the din, he shouted at John Gildea to tell the referee so he could go down but to no avail. Senan Connell came running at him and he had no option but to launch himself at the Dublin player. Afterwards, he was carried off.

He was out of the game for six months.

"The funny thing was, people thought I got hurt in the tackle. I'd meet boys and they'd ask me how the injury was. And then there'd be a wee silence and they would say, 'No offence, hey, but I've no fuckin' sympathy for ye. It was wild the way you hauled that man down.' I got so sick of trying to explain the truth I just ended up going, 'Aye, it was stupid, I should have known better'."

In reality, it was a grievous setback for a young player trying to impose himself on a new team. Monaghan comes from weighty football stock. His father, Donal, played on the same wing as Brian McEniff for a decade, winning Ulster medals in 1972 and 1974. "Long before my time," said Barry. "Don't think there was too much talk about me back then. But I heard they looked out for each other."

He was 13 during 1992, the perfect age for the wonder of Donegal's All-Ireland victory to work his imagination. He stood in the Diamond on the homecoming night, one that raged on heedless of the rising sun over Donegal Bay. By 1996, he played midfield on Anthony Molloy's minor team that lost an All-Ireland final to Laois and four years later got a senior cap against Fermanagh.

"It was that mad time - we played them three times. I went on in the third game with a few minutes left and I think we were nine points up. By the time it finished, we were just three points up. My first action was to run back and lift the ball out of the back of the net. That was my first touch. It was sort of a wake-up call. I remember thinking, if these Fermanagh boys keep this up, there is nothing surer than I'll not be playing again."

But he worked hard, patiently converting himself from a midfielder to a centre back that anchors an attacking defensive unit.

His old instincts as a forward have not left him, however, and he is a comfortable ball-player, cropping up to supply Christy Toye with the pass that led to Donegal's famous, flowing goal against Armagh on that day in Croke Park. He remains steadfastly modest about the development of his own game but allows that centre back now feels like home. There have been times, though, when it was an uncomfortable dwelling, not least last January in the McKenna Cup final against Tyrone.

"Aye, I was on Brian McGuigan that day too. He got the goal that set the whole thing off and generally gave me the runaround. He is quality. But our whole team was under so much pressure that day. We wanted to see where we were at and just the gulf in the end was tough to take. Like, 15 points - I don't know that any team would have handled Tyrone that day but a lot would have been closer than 15 points."

That game is one of the reasons Donegal will go up the road to Clones tomorrow still the outsiders, still a mystery. It is how they prefer it. There were nights last winter driving over to Castlefin with a storm blowing through Barnesmore gap that Monaghan thought about the senior men on the team. Players like Brian Roper, Devenney, Sweeney and Damien Diver, with eight years' solid effort behind them. That seems like a long time. Although Monaghan is still relatively young, he often feels like a hermit around Donegal Town, a place with a good social scene.

"I don't think there's a whole pile that know me about here at this stage," he laughed. "Like, you try and avoid the busy places because in fairness, people mean well and they talk about the games and stuff but you'd only get carried away. Like, this is what you play for. When I think back to last year, God, it was a great time. It got the whole county going. You never get tired of playing in Croke Park. And there are boys in our team now that we would really love to see with an Ulster medal. Like, there mightn't be much talk about us but among ourselves, we believe. Of course, probably the best two teams in the country are there waiting for us so if we do win it, it will have to be the hard way. Typical us."