Sunday, June 27 2015: Ulster MFC semi-final: Derry 0-11 Donegal 0-10
“That was the day. The boys got to see what it was like to win big games” – Former Derry minor manager, Damian McErlain
STANDING behind the goal in The Athletic Grounds, Damian McErlain did a quick scan of the Derry backs before referee David Gough threw the ball up.
A few yards away stood Odhran Lynch, a sub goalkeeper under McErlain in 2017, the last of his three years in charge of the county minors.
He handed Lynch his senior debut two years later in a McKenna Cup game against Rory Gallagher’s Fermanagh.
More of McErlain’s minors limbered up for their Ulster semi-final battle with Monaghan.
Conor McCluskey was bouncing out of his skin. So too were wing-backs and Newbridge men Conor Doherty and Padraig McGrogan.
Further out the field with those unmistakable flame-haired curls, Conor Glass saddled up to Monaghan’s Niall Kearns.
Wearing number 11, Shea Downey - injury-free, flying and born for this stage.
At the far end of the field, the imperturbable Shane McGuigan. Nearly always top scorer before the game starts.
McCluskey immediately moved onto Kieran Hughes. Chrissy McKaigue made a beeline for Jack McCarron and McGrogan was entrusted with the Conor McManus portfolio.
Was McErlain nervous for McGrogan, one of the bright lights of the minor class of 2016 and ‘17?
“Ah jeez, no bother,” McErlain says.
“Whoever Paudie rocks up to I’ve full faith in him. He was a brilliant player for us and a brilliant captain - no-nonsense, no negativity, he just gets on with it. That’s how he plays the game.”
“And ‘Clucky’ [Conor McCluskey] is one of the top six defenders in Derry, maybe top three. He’s a Rolls Royce of a defender, really, really good on the ball, there’s never a word out of him.
“And Shea is playing there. He’s a Downey. He believes he should be playing at that level and is capable of playing at that level. He’s stuck at it after a couple of injuries and is producing.
‘CD’ [Conor Doherty] always wanted to be a county player, he had all the athletic attributes to be a county player.
“To be honest, none of them has surprised me,” McErlain says of the 10 senior panellists he coached at minor level.
“It’s been brilliant as they’re getting a run of games. As Rory says, they’ve played 19 or 20 games for Derry at this stage – that’s a lot of football and they’re now getting a bit of experience behind their youth.”
For the second game running in this year’s Ulster Championship, Derry were absolutely awesome at The Athletic Grounds.
Like against Tyrone in Healy Park, Monaghan were beaten from a long way out. Now, they’re on the cusp of an Ulster title this weekend against familiar foes Donegal.
Behind the wire two Sundays ago, the unassuming McErlain could rock back on his heels and take a huge slice of credit for helping mould the class of ’22.
“The thing about it was those boys came in when the minors were at a low ebb, they really wanted to play for Derry and enjoy that minor experience which has now led them to this. They haven’t left Owenbeg since.”
When the season is over and Derry folk eventually gather themselves, they’ll pull back the lens and Damian McErlain will be in every frame.
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SECONDS remain between Derry and Donegal in the 2015 Ulster semi-final in Clones.
Damian McErlain is fit to be tied.
Antrim ref Sean Laverty spots an infringement and awards Donegal a last-gasp penalty. Declan Bonner’s men trail by two.
Derry have been outstanding from start to finish, but they could rue a host of missed chances.
If penalty-taker Conor Doherty converts for Donegal this will be one of the greatest muggings in living memory.
“When the penalty was awarded my mind flashed to 10 minutes after the game and what our changing room would look like,” recalls Barry Gillis, McErlain’s goalkeeping coach.
“It would have been the sort of thing had it gone the wrong way - I’m not saying it would make a lad quit football, but it would probably make him question it. You were thinking that this was going to be soul-destroying for so many of our lads.
“To this day,” Gillis adds, “it still eludes me how the penalty was awarded... I think Donegal were stunned at the time too. The Donegal lad was about to pull the trigger but one of our boys knocked the ball out of his hands and it was deemed that he’d taken him out when he was about to kick it…”
This semi-final had come down to Donegal's Conor Doherty versus Derry's Callum Mullan-Young.
Boom! The Kilcar man gets right under the ball and his spot-kick flies over Derry’s crossbar. The Oak Leaf supporters erupt.
One more kick-out to navigate and Derry will be in their first Ulster minor final since 2007.
“I would've got suspended for two years had Donegal scored that penalty,” McErlain says.
Although they still had to face a dangerous Cavan team in the decider, their 0-11 to 0-10 semi-final victory over Ulster and All-Ireland favourites Donegal was Derry’s day of emancipation.
“That was the day,” McErlain adds.
“Anybody you talk to that followed us from that minor campaign knows that, they quote it back to me, they understand it because that Donegal team were basically All-Ireland contenders.”
Jim McGuinness had guided the Donegal seniors to the All-Ireland final the previous summer, where they were pipped by Kerry, while the county’s underbelly was in rude health with the minors claiming the 2014 provincial crown before falling, as their seniors did, to the Kingdom in their All-Ireland decider.
By the time the following season came around, Eoghan 'Ban' Gallagher, Jamie Brennan and Cathal McGonigle had moved on and were pushing for senior recognition, but there was another tranche of top quality minors coming through in Donegal, including Brendan McCole, Stephen McMenamin, Jason McGee, Michael Langan, Ethan and Niall O’Donnell and Daire Ó Baoill.
Donegal were naturally raging hot favourites to retain their Ulster crown in 2015 and Derry were acutely aware of just how far they had to travel to reach their neighbours’ gold-plated standards.
Earlier that year, they suffered a 14-point hammering at the hands of Donegal in a league meeting in Ballybofey, but they’d managed to reduce that deficit to six when the neighbours collided in the minor league final.
“We saw enough that day to think there is something in us,” McErlain recalls. “We knew Donegal were a quality side.”
“That Donegal team was being moulded as All-Ireland champions that year,” says Gillis.
“Every pundit, every coach in the country said that nobody would beat them and it would be an All-Ireland between them and Kerry. So it became a massive, massive game for us.”
A key element to Derry’s success was negating Donegal’s aerial strengths around the middle of the field.
Gillis says: “They had huge men around the middle so we’d obviously had to come up with a kick-out to try and avoid that. I know we’d Conor Glass but we settled on a movement kick-out to pull them across the pitch and it turned out to be very effective that day.”
It was also a game where Glass announced himself on the inter-county stage. The Glen man had a “blinder” of a game, kicking seven points – over half of Derry’s overall tally.
“Conor was absolutely immense,” says McErlain. “He wasn’t the only one that day. And the thing was we’d planned to play defensively and break in droves.
“Conor was coming from half-back deep as opposed to sweeper deep and Donegal couldn’t pick him up at all. He came up and kicked a few points…
“And Shane [McGuigan] was always good for two or three points per game. He was another player that came of age in that minor campaign.
“Against Donegal, he was one of just two or three forwards who was asked to play up front because that’s the game we were going to play. He had a massive shift to do. That’s the one thing about Shane, he’ll play wherever he’s asked to play.
“The day against Cavan in the Ulster final he basically destroyed their full-back line. That was the day he arrived and he hasn’t lost the radar since…
“In beating Donegal, the boys got to see what it was like to win big matches and I suppose they saw the amount of tactical work the management put in and trying to overcome them.”
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A GAPING black hole had emerged at underage level in Derry.
After claiming the 2002 All-Ireland title, the Oak Leaf minors had made just one fleeting provincial final appearance (in 2007) before McErlain arrived and guided them to three finals in a row – 2015, 2016, 2017 – claiming the silverware in ’15 and ’17.
It coincided with St Pat’s, Maghera disappearing from the MacRory Cup podium too between 2004 and 2012 before the natural order of things was restored with wins in 2013, ’14 and ’16.
Meanwhile, a rising tide raises all boats as the ‘Convent’ nailed their first-ever MacRory in 2017 in spectacular style.
“When I took the job and spoke to [county officers] John Keenan and Chris Collins, we were very, very strong that we needed everything to be professional and the players needed to understand that this was a different level,” says McErlain.
“Yes, they were playing colleges football but they needed to understand that we were going to give them everything they possibly needed to produce at county level.
“In those days, there was maybe a bit of a stigma attached to going to Owenbeg.
“There was a negativity about the county – ‘What are you going up there for?’
“But once Derry started winning, players wanted to be there. In fairness, all the structures were put in place, there was buy-in, the best coaches were involved in the development squads, the strength and conditioning element was fully in place.
“It was well organised; teams were getting well looked after. Young boys wanted to be there. And clubs probably thought to themselves that it was worth going to.”
Although Donegal would come back to beat them in an Ulster final rematch the following year, the important thing was the Oak Leaf conveyor belt had started moving again.
Conor McCluskey, Padraig McGrogan, Conor Doherty, Ben McCarron, Odhran Lynch, Oisin McWilliams and Declan Cassidy were all coming down the tracks.
In 2017, Derry won their second Ulster title in three years but they could never navigate a way past Kerry in the All-Ireland series.
The roots of Rory Gallagher’s Derry side that will aim for Ulster glory in Clones on Sunday can be traced back to June 27, 2015 and that narrow semi-final win over Donegal.
But what if Donegal’s Conor Doherty had netted that stoppage-time penalty and knocked Derry out of the minor semi-finals? Would the course of history have changed? Would Derry’s trajectory post-2015 been different?
“It could well have been,” says McErlain.
“That win definitely changed the dynamic for Derry because we desperately needed to win that game for building credibility and for the work we’d done that year, we needed something to show for it.
“Getting over the line against Cavan in the final is the bit that’s written in stone now and it was great, but nothing was ever going to beat the euphoria of that semi-final win because that was a special day in Derry football.”
For Gillis, the 2015 semi-final win over Donegal was Derry’s sliding doors moment.
“When you think of the time and effort that went into that game, right across the board, it would have been very hard to pick it up and go again even though there were good footballers coming in Derry after that. But it would have been a very difficult one to take and move forward.”
The former Derry keeper adds: “The thing that stood out for me that day was the amount of energy the lads expended. The work-rate was through the roof.
“I remember Jack Doherty coming up to me at the end and he was actually foaming at the mouth he’d put that big a shift in, and he wasn’t on his own.
“To be part of that and see the lads mature and develop and ultimately start the journey that has brought them to Sunday where quite a lot of them are in with a chance of winning an Ulster at senior level is brilliant.
“Fair play to those lads who stuck with it and were dedicated.”
Seven years on, there will be familiar faces all over the pitch in Clones on Sunday afternoon.
Given the standards both Derry and Donegal have set, a reacquaintance on one of the biggest stages in Gaelic football was somewhat inevitable.
The 2015 Ulster MFC semi-final teams...
DONEGAL: Danny Rodgers; Seaghan Ferry, Stephen McMenamin, Gary McFadden; Dáire Ó Baoill, Brendan McCole, Philip McNern; Jason McGee, Michael Carroll; Niall O’Donnell, Michael Langan, Ethan O’Donnell (0-4, 4f); Conor Doherty (0-3, 1f, 1pen), Rory Carr (0-3, 1 ’45, 1f), Naoise Ó Baoill. Subs: Mark Coyle for N.O’Donnell (half-time), Kane Barrett for McCole (34 mins), Eoghan McGettigan for N.Ó Baoill (53 mins), Philip Doherty for Langan (56 mins).
DERRY: Callum Mullan-Young; Niall Keenan, Conor McGrogan, Conor Maunsall; Oisin Duffin, Michael McEvoy, Eoghan Concannon; Patrick Kearney (0-1), Jack Doherty; Patrick Coney, Shea Downey, Conor Glass (0-7, 2 ’45, 3f); Tiarnan Flanagan, Barry Grant, Shane McGuigan (0-3, 1f). Subs: Feargal Higgins for Grant (38 mins), Niall McAtamney for Duffin (54 mins), Brian Cassidy for Kearney (54 mins).
