THERE will be no need for introductions at Brewster Park tomorrow night. Not for Richie Donnelly anyway.
Although this will be a first Championship meeting in 15 years, with just one National League encounter during that time, ties between Tyrone and neighbours Fermanagh are often intertwined.
Even this weekend, Erne boss Kieran Donnelly is a teacher at Omagh CBS, and has coached four of the Red Hands’ All-Ireland winning 15 - Conor Meyler, Peter Harte, Niall Sludden and Ben McDonnell. Dromore man Fergal Quinn, Donnelly’s assistant, is a fellow CBS teacher.
The Tyrone Donnellys are another case in point.
Born and bred in Trillick, just over the Tyrone side of the border, brothers Mattie and Richie went to school at St Michael’s, Enniskillen. Mattie won’t feature tomorrow, ruled out with a hamstring injury, but there’s a fair chance Richie will - quite possibly from the start.
And there will be no secrets, no matter which way he turns.
“I played with nearly all of them,” he says.
“The older boys, the likes of Sean Quigley, Aidan Breen, Kane Connor, Ryan Jones, Richie O’Callaghan, my cousin James McMahon is in there. And then the younger boys too…”
Donnelly might not have played alongside the likes of Sean McNally, Josh Largo-Ellis, Luke Flanagan, Brandon Horan and Joe McDade, but he was there, shoulder to shoulder, in their finest hour.
It’s three years now since a brilliant St Michael’s side blazed through Ulster to MacRory Cup glory, before displaying nerves of steel to see off Naas CBS in the Hogan Cup decider.
At the start of that year Dom Corrigan – knowing the huge potential of the group - asked Donnelly and Kilcoo’s former Down forward Conor Laverty to come on board for a push towards the top. The combination reaped rich dividends.
If anybody knows how mentally able those young men will be for tomorrow’s showdown, it is Donnelly.
“I’d be familiar with all of them, and they’re all real good lads.
“Those younger boys, I know what they’re about, their character. I’ve seen them being able to perform on the big day against the best opposition in the country, when the pressure was really on.
“I know exactly what they can do, what they’re capable of. Every one of them has a very bright future ahead.”
Although 29 now, it feels like no time since that was him, breaking through into the senior set-up, bulletproof, believing anything was possible.
Long before the most dramatic of summers delivered Sam last September, Donnelly was part of the Tyrone minor side that went all the way in 2010.
Two of his team-mates that day, Hugh Pat McGeary and Ronan O’Neill, shared the journey back to Croke Park on the biggest of days, watching from the wings rather than starting as they had done 11 years earlier.
As the dust settled on an astonishing campaign, both called time on their county careers - perhaps for now, perhaps for good – while the months between have also seen Tiernan McCann, Mark Bradley, Michael Cassidy, Lee Brennan and, most recently, Paul Donaghy exit the stage.
Away from the bright lights and the crowds, on the dark, dirty nights up in Garvaghey, all played their part in shaping the All-Ireland champions, just as Donnelly did. No ill will is born, no questions asked, just memories stored of some of the best days of their lives.
“Everyone’s different. Every player is going to a different home, a different job, everyone’s scenario is completely different. I can’t speak on behalf of those boys, all I can say is when they were there they were fully committed to the team and have given unbelievable service.
“For so many years the goal for that group was to win an All-Ireland, and when you achieve that, for a lot of people that’s enough. I have nothing but respect for those boys, and I’ve no doubt we wouldn’t have achieved what we did without any of them.”
Despite his own injury issues over the years – and there have been plenty - despite trying to get a new business off the ground, despite struggling to nail down a settled starting spot, Donnelly is still there.
Three days before the first lockdown in 2020, Donnelly quit his sales job with Barcelona-based brewery Damm, determined to pursue a dream. Last summer he finally opened Natur & Co Social Wellness Club in Omagh, around the same time as Tyrone were on the way to becoming Ulster and All-Ireland champions – and around the same time as he was struck down with Covid, forcing him down the Red Hand pecking order as crunch time loomed.
In an Irish News interview earlier this year, former team-mate O’Neill outlined the excruciating psychological toll of waiting to discover whether he would be part of Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher’s 26-man All-Ireland final squad.
He wasn’t. Donnelly didn’t make the cut either. The margins at the top level are fine, and rationalising that disappointment in the heat of the moment is easier said than done.
Yet, with another Championship campaign getting under way tomorrow, joining the exodus was never on the agenda.
“It does be tough but no, it never entered my head to leave, or asking myself was it worth it. Setbacks happen, you grieve for a few days, but because you’re so driven naturally because you’re in that sort of environment, you just think ‘right, what’s next?’ And you get stuck into it.
“It’s hugely frustrating, don’t get me wrong. There’s more low days than good days with the injuries, it takes a massive mental toll, but that’s why inter-county players are where they are – because they can absorb it and get on with it. It’s not a sport for the soft-hearted. You do have to be tough with it.
“I’ve been in all positions within squads, which I now see as a good thing – I’m glad of all that experience because you can face whatever comes your way within a squad. It is really tough, and everyone up there in that sort of environment, everyone has an ego that they want stroked.
“You might be disappointed more times than not, you just have to deal with it. When you get onto a squad the job’s not done, so you need to make sure you still have that drive and ambition that got you there in the first place.”
For that reason, dwelling on the past – the melting pot of emotions that All-Ireland final day brought, the blurred days and weeks that followed – Donnelly has no particular interest in going there. Not now.
“It’s still joy, when I think back. At the time, it’s a roller-coaster, but the joy really overpowers all of it. Just to see the boys get over the line and achieve that… but, without being smart here, I don’t want to talk too much about last year because I’ve moved on, the team’s moved on.
“We’re very much focused on this summer because it’s right on the doorstep.”
And, in the wake of players bidding farewell and injuries to big brother Mattie, Peter Harte and Padraig McNulty, the versatility Donnelly offers arguably makes him more important to Logan and Dooher than ever.
Tyrone’s topsy-turvy League campaign brought starts on the first and last days, against Monaghan and Kerry, when survival was dramatically secured in Killarney, with sub appearances in games against Kildare, Donegal, Dublin and Mayo in between.
He would love to be running out at Brewster Park tomorrow but as his career has evolved, the way managers plan and prepare for matches has changed too.
“There was a time where I was so fixed on needing to be starting, and that has probably changed a bit. Don’t mistake that for not being ambitious, but I am very much in a place now where I just want to contribute as best I can to that group because you’ve been there a long time, you’re very attached to them. You just want to give your best to it.
“There’s a lot of variables in getting a starting team right and a finishing team right – that’s the way county football is now. People and players need to be aware of that, so I’m very happy with whatever role I get. That’s the headspace I’m in. Whatever’s thrown at me, I’ll deal with it.
“I do feel I’m a better player now, purely down to a bit of experience. I’m settled off the field in terms of my career too, people probably underestimate that side of it.”
Starting his own business, being his own boss, the man with whom the buck stops, has not only altered Donnelly’s life significantly, it has also helped place his relationship with football in perspective.
Once the be all and end all, the centre of everything, that can longer be the case.
“Ah look, it’s hectic at times. When we opened in the middle of Championship, you’re thrown in the deep end, then running to training at night. It was full on but it was good.
“Months down the line now, you’re in a better place to deal with stuff… it has sort of changed my outlook on sport and football.
“From the last seven or eight years in county football, it is your identity. When you’re injured, you feel lost. That’s why there is such a mental toll being injured because it’s like your whole life is taken away.
“Before this I was in a cushy wee sales number, anything I did in that job was made to work around football. If I had to go and do a recovery session at lunchtime, I went and did it. For years I would’ve been at the total opposite end of the scale from where I am now.
“Everything then was based around football, where now football is the release. It’s healthy. It feels like I’m in a good place with everything.”
