ULSTER SFC MONAGHAN v DERRY:SUNDAY IN Celtic Park will be a watershed for Monaghan football. Séamus McEnaney's team has amassed a sizeable portfolio of good championship results in the past few years between Ulster and the qualifiers. For the past two years, the season has come down to a titanic battle with Kerry, which the small northern county has narrowly lost each time.

As McEnaney reflected last year, every time the county had looked on its way, somewhere Kerry “was in the road” – 1930 All-Ireland final, semi-finals in 1979 and famously, after a replay in 1985, the 2007 quarter-final and last year’s qualifier.

The problem for Monaghan now is the county needs something more than the 2005 Division Two title – for all the rapture triggered by the last-kick win over Meath – to show for all of their promise.

Bernie Murray was a member of the great team of the 1980s, a selector with McEnaney in ’05 and currently manages the county minors. He says that provincial success is a must for the team this year.

“For the first couple of years if the championship involvement didn’t work out it was great to get a run in the qualifiers, but the focus over the last few seasons from everyone in the county has been – ‘can we win an Ulster title’? We haven’t won an Ulster title in 21 years and every passing year makes it more important.”

Ulster titles are notoriously hard won. The province contains several counties that would feel the provincial championship within their reach, but this is an exceptional era for football in the north. Between them, Armagh and Tyrone have four All-Irelands this decade and their duopoly in the province stands at 10 years, creeping up towards the 13-year run by Down and Cavan between 1959-71.

“It is very difficult,” says Murray. “For example, Donegal won their last Ulster in 1992 and haven’t won it since, despite playing football in Division One for most of the intervening years.

“Look at Derry – ’98 was the last time and they’ve had a lot of under-age success at under-21 and minor level since as well as provincial club titles and an AllIreland, but they haven’t been able to get two or three big wins back to back in the Ulster championship in the years since.

“Armagh and Tyrone have had the province in a stranglehold and it shows how hard it is to win Ulster. It’s difficult enough to win one match. At the weekend, Fermanagh beat Down but they’re only into the quarter-finals.”

Monaghan are outsiders for the weekend’s match despite a league campaign that earned promotion. They lost the divisional final to Cork and face a Derry side that manager Damian Cassidy managed to bring to the Division One final while simultaneously trialling a number of new players.

They have also defeated Derry in each of the past two years and, although they did so on merit, there is a sense that the fun may be over for Monaghan. Murray, however, sees advantage in the respective circumstances of the counties.

“There may be a feeling that Monaghan aren’t going to do it again against Derry, especially in Celtic Park where they have a disappointing record and that if they lose then this team’s race is run. But the one advantage they have is a settled team that’s been around the block, whereas Damian Cassidy’s been trying out a lot of players and has to cope with injuries to key players.”

Losing the league final last month was a chastening affair. It can be argued that McEnaney had no reason to prioritise a title he’d already won four years previously and that the team may have intensified its training beforehand, but Monaghan looked leaden and immobile against a fast and physical Cork team. Whatever the reason, it fuelled anxiety that the side was on borrowed time and in need of fresh blood.

“The answer is coming on Sunday,” says Murray. “Obviously, the Cork game left a lot of people disappointed. The team looked lethargic and had problems around the middle of the field. If Eoin Lennon and Dick Clerkin aren’t clicking, we have to bring Paul Finlay back and we don’t really have anyone else.

“That’s a symptom of being a small county without the sort of resources that bigger counties have. So this really is a crossroads game for players and management.

“After the last few years I think the team really need something they can get their hands on and an Ulster championship is a reasonable target.

“If we win Ulster, even if we get knocked out in an All-Ireland quarter-final, it will be seen as an excellent year now that we’re back playing Division One football again next year.”