Ulster SFC preliminary round: Donegal v Derry (Sunday, 2pm, MacCumhaill Park, live on RTÉ & BBC)
ON Wednesday night, Derry U20s hammered Monaghan. It was their second big margin of victory in the group stage of their Ulster Championship, having done the same to Armagh.
Just a few weeks ago, St Patrick’s Maghera won the Hogan Cup.
Over the last decade, the Oak Leaf county has placed a lot of faith in the traditional building blocks.
The whole country now looks up at the Sperrins and wondering what it is they’re doing up there that works so well.
It is a formula that has worked well for Derry in the past.
The 1993 All-Ireland success was largely built off the 1983 and ‘89 minor teams that won All-Irelands.
Up until 2020, Derry had won four All-Ireland titles at the grade in their history. They’ve added three more since.
They’ve won five Ulster titles at the grade since 2015 and lost another three finals.
Donegal have never won an All-Ireland minor title. The last of their seven provincial titles came in 2016.
The tumult over the collapse of their Academy two years ago has settled.
Last month, it was announced that Karl Lacey would return to lead it. He had stepped down in 2023, citing a “lack of support”. The ramifications of that fallout were huge.
If any reasonable person had been told in 2015 what the decade ahead held in store in terms of underage development and success for Derry and Donegal and asked to predict who might win a senior championship game in the summer of ‘25, there could only be one answer.
Their respective trajectories have shown one thing very clearly.
The cult of personality can be stronger than the culture of winning.
Having the right man at the top is, despite what those involved in player development will tell you, the most important thing of all.
In the week that the great Mick O’Dwyer passed away, there’s a line in Pat Spillane’s book that sums it up.
“Without him, we would probably have won an All-Ireland alright, or two, given the raw talent on the team. But the reason we won eight was Micko. He was the glue that kept us together. He was the conductor, the ringmaster, the point guard.”
Everyone is acutely aware now of how Kieran McGeeney built a palace on sand.
Armagh’s record at every underage grade for the last pretty woeful. They won an All-Ireland minor in 2009 in what was just their second final since 1957. They’ve won the same number of Ulster U21 titles in their history as Fermanagh – just three, and all of them between 1998 and 2007.
They became All-Ireland champions by building from the top down, not the bottom up.
Where McGeeney differs from many is that he imparted real trust in his backroom team. He is the manager, not the coach.
The whole county of Donegal, not just the team, are completely intoxicated by the size and strength of Jim McGuinness’ personality.
It is just shy of two years ago since Derry went to Ballybofey and came out with a five-point win that was not as handsome or convincing as many expected it to be.
Derry were still trying to find their feet from the sudden departure of Rory Gallagher.
They steadied up briefly and almost ambushed Kerry, but from that afternoon to this, there has been an inexorable slide that owes entirely to the foundations on which it was really built.
The earlier underage successes between 2015 and 2019 had progressed the team to a certain point.
Gallagher took them to another level altogether.
The synchronicity with which Derry won one Ulster title and would add a second days after his exit was entirely down to what they did on the training ground.
It has transpired that the entire project was entirely reliant on his presence.
Of all the admissions made by Gareth McKinless this week on the GAA Social podcast, perhaps the most telling was the concession that from having been in the top “three or four in the country”, Derry are now “back among the pack”.
Derry’s presence in the top tier seems to have lived and died with Rory Gallagher.
You’d have to feel for Paddy Tally, just as you would have for Mickey Harte last year.
The team they’ve inherited was built on a system. And despite all that the county had achieved at the bottom to create the mould, their success was precast and set in place by the man at the top.
Combined with the injuries that have crucified them defensively, it hasn’t been easy.
Yet go back to that 2023 meeting. Ten of Derry’s starting team that day will start on Sunday.
It is an injury and personnel thing, but not solely. It’s just as much a belief and a confidence thing.
Donegal’s success will last as long as Jim McGuinness lasts.
They’ll try to find ways to argue with that but the proof was in the pudding when he left last time.
For a decade they tipped around Ulster finals but failed to reach the last four of the All-Ireland.
In one year, he not only took them to that stage, but to the point where it was almost a surprise that they didn’t win the thing.
Donegal are being propelled by the cult of personality.
Derry are not wrong to keep on going the underage route, because what else can you do?
The work of men like Damian McErlain, whose record at underage is incredible, is what will make and keep them competitive until they unearth someone that can galvanise the senior group.
Achieving that has been almost impossible for both Tally and Harte, because the players that are there believed so firmly that the system under Gallagher was taking them to an All-Ireland.
It feels almost wrong that having the right man at the top should be a more powerful force than a decade of toiling and building and creating in the shadows.
But it just is.