Derry's old warriors back at the front

Five years and six days ago the sports editor of this parish stubbed out his regulation-issue large cigar, leaned back in his cavernous leather swivel chair and hatched one of his trademark cunning plans.

"We're going to get you to go and do three training sessions - one soccer, one Gaelic football and one rugby," he grinned. "And it would be nice if you could do them on successive nights," was his mischievous parting shot.

And so it came to pass that on the Wednesday night before Derry's 1993 Ulster final with Donegal we trundled through the leafy roads of Tyrone and into the football heartland of south Derry. These were days when the recently-opened state-of-the-art centre of excellence at Owenbeg was only a twinkle in the county board's eye and so their senior footballers trained in Maghera.

This was a squad already flushed with achievement. Many had travelled along the football production line that was St Patrick's College Maghera and begun the Adrian McGuckin-supervised transformation from footballing boys to footballing men. Anthony Tohill, Gary Coleman and Eamonn Burns had won All-Ireland minor medals in 1989. And the previous May Derry had landed a national title by doing what they relish above everything - breaking Tyrone hearts - with a late goal in the National League final.

But there would be no true breakthrough until they could end a 17-year drought with an Ulster title. On the Maghera training field that drizzly Wednesday night Derry eased themselves through Ulster final week under the tutelage of Mickey Moran and the omnipresent watching eye of manager Eamon Coleman.

We used the same dressing-room and togged out together, but that's where any lingering similarities came to an abrupt halt. These were the players who just two months later would carve themselves into Derry legend - the McCusker brothers, Scullion, Tohill, McGurk, McGilligan, Barton and Brolly - and who were in the footballing form of their lives. Moran's drills were slick, engaging, well-organised and the pretty patterns of fist passes and shuttle sprints were only intermittently disrupted by the lumbering presence of The Irish Times novice.

Four days later on a Clones quagmire made all but unplayable by a biblical downpour and inadequate pitch drainage, Derry were anything but pretty. But they drew deep on other qualities of determination, drive and sheer cussedness that seemed almost to mirror the personality of their figurehead, Eamon Coleman.

Derry won a low-scoring, inauspicious final, memorable mostly for a coming-of-age performance by Anthony Tohill, by 0-8 to 0-6 and wins over Dublin and Cork during the next two months were enough for an epoch-making first All-Ireland title.

And before 4.10 last Sunday afternoon - two more National League wins notwithstanding - that was that for this collection of Derry players.

The waters of Ulster are notoriously choppy for defending champions and in 1994 Derry tumbled at the first obstacle against Down in what's generally acknowledged to have been the match mirabilis of the decade. Tyrone then managed successive Ulster victories in 1995 and 1996 and Derry's relative underachievement obviously rankled.

In the days preceding last Sunday's showdown - again against Donegal, again played in the wake of a thunderous downpour - the senior Derry players were taking their tunnel vision almost to the point of obsession. They didn't care how they won it; they weren't bothered about rounding off a flat Ulster championship with a glittering, showpiece final. Never mind the quality. Just win it. Just do it.

And so it came to pass during 70 minutes that will be remembered most for some muddled refereeing and Joe Brolly's injury-time coup de grace. Afterwards, as they picked over the runes of the game, Derry the team were a collection of vindicated individuals.

Henry and Seamus Downey have started to thin out on top and there are speckles of grey in the hair of Brolly and Gormley. Wear and tear have slowed their limbs a fraction but for men like Henry Downey and Joe Brolly the first few yards are now in their head.

Henry has been the outstanding figure in Ulster this summer, an unflappable bedrock and the consummate platform for the forwards to unfold in front of him. Brolly endured a miserable afternoon at the ever-eager hands of Barry McGowan last Sunday, but he had the presence of mind to drift left, unnoticed, as the seconds ticked away to accept Geoffrey McGonigle's match-winning pass into his welcoming arms.

There was vindication in victory, too, for the Derry manager, Brian Mullins. Avuncular will never be an adjective that could be applied to him, but it does seem that the traditionally abrasive Mullins has become more comfortable with the vagaries of both Derry and Ulster football with every passing day of his tenure. There have been noticeable signs this season that the players are much more comfortable with Mullins's individual quirks and foibles. That relaxation has in turn enabled them to focus much more single-mindedly on the tasks in hand.

The big-time experience of those same players has had just a little to do with it as well. They finished last Sunday's final with eight of the men who played against Cork in the All-Ireland final of 1993, with another member of that side on the bench and yet another on his way back from injury. Two-thirds of an All-Ireland-winning team represents backbone and mental strength writ large. With the foothills safely negotiated at the third time of asking, Mullins now has his first chance to parade his managerial nous on a national stage. How he'll cope in that goldfish bowl remains to be seen, but at the end of the journey on which his players now embark lies the tantalising prospect of an All-Ireland final against Meath. Wouldn't the old war horse just lick his lips at the prospect of that one?

The great sage of Ulster football, the former Tyrone manager Art McRory, once said of football and football followers in the province, "opinions here are like elbows, everyone's got two of them". Whether Derry can go on to emulate Down with a second All-Ireland this decade remains to be seen, but for now it's enough that they'll go into August in full training for the first time in five years. With so many of them now edging towards the end of their great inter-county adventure, they've got their eyes on the big picture like never before.