Old foes must find new approach

All-Ireland SFC qualifierIan O'Riordan talks to Donegal's Rory Kavanagh, who outlines why there'll be very few secrets surrounding Sunday's match against Fermanagh

There's a lot of truth to that talk of Donegal and Fermanagh knowing each other inside out. Sunday's round-four qualifier will be their seventh championship meeting in the last seven years, and that practically makes them family.

It may surprise some that Fermanagh have lost only one of those meetings, but whenever these Ulster neighbours meet there's a sense that either team could win - and both believe they will win.

And they've an added insight into each other for Sunday. Fermanagh manager Charlie Mulgrew first made his name on the Donegal team of the 1980s and early 1990s and still lives and works in Letterkenny.

Mulgrew has also managed St Eunan's, who happen to have produced two of Donegal's main scoring threats for Sunday - Rory Kavanagh and Conall Dunne.

That advantage probably works both ways. Mulgrew knows the way these Donegal players think, and they know the same about him. Kavanagh admits there'll be very few secrets surrounding Sunday's game in Enniskillen.

"Charlie would know a lot of this Donegal team personally," he says. "And a lot of us would know him. I know him very well. He's very tactical and works a lot on that because that's the way the game has gone. And the homework is always done on players.

"He's also very shrewd, and not afraid to make the necessary changes either. He's very sharp on the line. I still see him at club training so plenty of jokes going around, and a few harder shoulders going in this week.

"It's all friendly of course, but it will all end for an hour or so on Sunday."

It goes without saying that Kavanagh and Donegal would have preferred meeting a non-Ulster team, or at least one they didn't know so well. Their last meeting in 2004 was also in the qualifiers and ended with a Fermanagh win after extra time - part of that memorable run to the All-Ireland semi-finals.

Fermanagh also won in 2003, though Donegal came out on top in the qualifier match of 2001.

"We definitely know each other very well," adds Kavanagh. "So I expect it to be a typical Ulster championship game - hard-hitting and not a lot of space to be found.

"Maybe we're more suited to some of the teams down south, where maybe there's more football involved. But from playing against Fermanagh in the past I know they don't pull and drag as much as other teams might do.

"But in the Ulster final against Armagh we couldn't get any momentum going, or our running game going. The whole game seemed to be very stop-start. And that didn't suit us. And I suppose it does take a while for a young team to get used to the big stage, so that will have done us no harm.

"But we're still hoping to get on another roll.

"We're a young side, and I think Armagh's experience stood to them on the day. Once they got the goal in the second half we were always playing catch-up, and of course there's no better team to close out a game than Armagh."

At 23, Kavanagh is one of the many new faces on the current Donegal team. Although he has been on the panel for a few years, he had yet to make any major impact. That all changed when he scored a wonder goal against Down in the Ulster quarter-final - and he's now viewed as one of Donegal's most dangerous forwards.

He suggests two reasons for the breakthrough - the new Donegal manager, Brian McIver, and the new stability in his life as a teacher in Donegal: "Brian came in with a totally new approach, a clean slate with all the players. Everyone was at the same level, with no favouritism or anything like that.

"He also brought in a lot of new boys. Freshened things up a lot.

"This is my first year starting, and I owe a lot to him for giving me the chance. For the past few years though I was away studying in Maynooth and then St Pat's in Dublin. So this was my first year based at home. In the past I was coming home at weekends and that's a different story. You're training on your own a lot, and you can't get the same intensity."

Kavanagh also sees a double incentive in Sunday's game. It's another chance to get to Croke Park, and put one over on his old friend Mulgrew.

"We want another shot to play in Croke Park definitely. I think we learned a lot from our first big game there. But we've also put that Ulster final behind us. Once we got back training and the draw was made all we've been thinking about is Fermanagh."