Time looks ripe for belt of Crozier

Ulster SFC/Tyrone v Derry: Their fierce rivals appear vulnerable but Derry are publicly keeping a lid on the hype ahead of  tomorrow's clash with Tyrone, writes Keith Duggan

It is a law of the Ulster championship that the vulnerable get punished. Because of that, an unspoken obligation seems to have been placed upon Derry to throw Tyrone's All-Ireland defence into chaos in Omagh tomorrow.

Derry are a football county trembling with promise for the last half decade, always threatening to do something special but somehow falling short. This year, they are young and talented and ragingly enthused, and Tyrone are shorn of so much of last summer's potency.

In the strongholds of south Derry, football men must be licking their lips.

"Funny, you can tell that there are fierce expectations of Derry outside the county," remarks Adrian McGuckin, the former Derry and Ballinderry player. "But I have to say that within the county, the atmosphere has been more muted. The Derry team have kept a fairly low profile and they are just concentrating on playing football.

"I am sure that Paddy Crozier probably quietly fancies that the team can go into Omagh and get a result.

"And because Peter Canavan is gone and Brian McGuigan is out long-term and other prominent Tyrone boys are carrying injuries, there has been a fair bit of speculation that Derry can go in and win it.

"But nobody in Derry is getting carried away. Omagh is always a terribly difficult venue to come out of with a win and Mickey Harte still has a terrific squad at his disposal, so because of that, Derry people will travel in hope rather than with any massive expectation."

Since 1993, when a deeply talented Derry team fell into a groove of playing purposeful and harmonious football and promptly won the All-Ireland, no county has been able to put them back in their place quite as emphatically as Tyrone.

The Oak Leaf county men made it to an All-Ireland semi-final in 2004 under the beloved tutelage of Mickey Moran, but all through that campaign they laboured just to escape the shadow of their first-round 1-17 to 1-6 drubbing at the hands of Tyrone, then defending All-Ireland champions.

That Tyrone were patently running on empty that summer, their cohesion fractured by the emotion of winning a first All-Ireland and then obliterated by the shocking death of Cormac McAnallen, made that defeat all the more stinging. It had been a reprise of the 2003 meeting between the counties. Derry had managed everything except a victory the first day, the game finishing 0-12 to 1-9, and in the replay, Tyrone came out and shredded them 0-17 to 1-5.

Derry's lone success against Tyrone came in 2002, but that year was ultimately more memorable for the success of the minors in the All-Ireland and because Ballinderry beat Nemo Rangers in the St Patrick's Day final.

The fierce pride and consistent excellence demonstrated by Derry's relatively small spread of football clubs is one of the more enduring stories in Gaelic games. The perpetual strength of Bellaghy and Ballinderry must have been oppressive at times but this year, the Loup reached the Ulster final and Slaughtneil were county champions before that.

The club scene is rich in Derry. But there is a nagging feeling local success has indirectly stymied the progression of the county team.

Certainly, the Derry County Board policy of running local championship games through the Ulster senior championship has caused tension and provoked Crozier's temporary resignation from the post of manager a few weeks ago.

Mickey Moran was faced with the same problems, memorably saying in the summer of 2004, "My heart would be in my mouth all weekend wondering how fellas would be getting on."

After Derry won a qualifying match against Limerick in Castlebar that year, a defiant Moran claimed it was a miracle his team were still in the championship as they had been reduced to just 20 players at training the previous Monday evening.

"We had a physiotherapist play top of the left so we could produce a team," he said.

It was noted by John Morrison, Moran's highly regarded trainer, that the last time Derry had fully suspended club activity was in 1993. McGuckin, though, feels the focus on club tensions has been exaggerated.

"I can't say that was my experience as a player. We won an All-Ireland (club championship) in March 2002 and I broke my leg playing a challenge game against Galway a few weeks later. But we had five or six Ballinderry men on the squad at that time and you absolutely could not fault their dedication.

"It was just taken for granted they were going to be at county training. I mean, they were completely committed to the club and it wasn't long before we were preparing for the Derry championship again but there was no question the county was their primary call."

It could be smooth sailing is simply not the Derry style. The county managed just one post-1993 success, under Brian Mullins in 1998. But when the Dublin legend quit the post a few years later, he wrote an open letter to the Derry Journal in which he cited as a major reason difficulties with a senior player who had his own ideas about the team.

In retrospect, Mullins did well to wring a provincial title out of a county still afflicted by the souring of relationships between Eamon Coleman and the county executive. Down beat Derry in "the game of the decade" in 1994 and went on to reclaim the All-Ireland title but the defeat precipitated the acrimonious departure of Coleman and effectively the break-up of probably the greatest team Derry ever produced.

"A great team that should have won two All-Irelands, maybe three, only got one," Coleman was to lament a few years later. "Those players - McGilligan, Downey, Barton, McGurk, Barton, Scullion, Brolly, all of them - they don't come along very often. It took so long to build them."

And it was Tyrone who hammered home the fact that the glory of 1993 had truly ended by inflicting a one-point defeat on Derry despite having Pascal Canavan and Séamus McCallon sent-off.

Tyrone went all the way to the All-Ireland final that year but the match hastened the break-up of the 1993 vintage.

When Derry played Galway in 1998, Damien McCusker, Tony Scullion, Johnny McGurk, Brian McGilligan, Damien Barton and Damien Cassidy had gone and Dermot Heaney was on the substitutes bench.

Those were mammoth voids for the county to fill. Coleman returned to a hero's welcome the following season but it wasn't quite the same.

Nor has it been since. Derry have been a puzzle for too long now. There were signs the Moran/Morrison axis might produce a new generation capable of breaking the grip of Armagh and Tyrone. And then, just like that, they were gone.

The choice of Crozier seemed a typically perverse move on the part of the Derry powerbrokers but at least the Ballymaguigan man knows his mind.

The stand-off with the Derry board, over the decision to schedule a round of club games 24 hours before the county team were to face Dublin in a challenge game, ended with a peaceful resolution. Upon Crozier's return, Derry beat Fermanagh - no pushovers under Charlie Mulgrew - in a challenge game by 2-16 to 1-8 and the Fermanagh goal was a late consolation for full back Barry Owens.

Last weekend, they travelled to Leitrim and put four goals past a back line with a good reputation. Paddy Bradley was reputedly brilliant in the game, knocking in three goals before half-time. Eoin Bradley got the other goal and Mark Lynch and Eoin Donaghy were also in sharp form as Derry finished up 4-11 to 0-11 winners.

There is a world of difference between the pastures of Leitrim and Healy Park, but if they can find the net in Omagh, they might be in business.

"There is no doubt that there is talent in the county," says Adrian McGuckin.

"Seán Martin Lockhart is still there from the All-Ireland under-21 team in 1997 and I think he has yet to turn 29. Guys like himself and Johnny McBride and Paul McFlynn are now the senior players. The defence is fairly settled and Enda Muldoon and Paddy Bradley can obviously do damage.

"With Derry it has been a matter of going that extra step on days when they are clearly troubling teams."

Every team has to make that leap of faith. It is almost three years to the week since Tyrone copped on to the life force in their squad by inflicting that memorable drubbing on Derry. The score was a shocking 0-16 to 0-4 before substitute Geoffrey McGonigle hammered a goal from a free. It was not enough to mask what was a humiliation in front of over 30,000 spectators.

After that match, Harte revealed he and his team had made a conscious decision in the build-up to the replay that they would do the necessary. "A lot of so-called experts said after last week that we hadn't got it in us to be winners."

That was three years ago and nobody says that about Tyrone anymore. Derry are a trickier prospect but tomorrow represents a shining opportunity to prove they are back. The day will be gripping, laced with the bitterness of recent memory, and will be contested to the last.