CAOLAN Donnelly wasn't even born when the entire Romania team bleached their hair blond at the 1998 soccer World Cup in France.
His decision to do likewise put his place on the Tyrone Minors team in doubt, joked manager Gerard Donnelly (no relation), but the Fintona lad did start - and finished with a goal as part of the Red Hands' 4-8 to 0-16 victory in a thriller.
The echoes of '98 were there in other ways. Tyrone Minors scored four goals to win the final that day too, before Derry claimed the senior crown.
The Minor Final lit up a memorable day back in Clones, with young Donnelly putting in a display more eye-catching than his manager would have wanted in one respect:
"He came in this morning with that and I was near chasing him back out again!
"I said to Caolan 'We're trying to keep you sorta low-key and you come in this morning with a hair-do like that!'"
The Fintona forward was delegated to man-mark Derry's captain Ruairi Forbes, a grandson of Tyrone GAA President and living legend Patsy Forbes, and the Red Hands minor manager was delighted with his namesake's display:
"Fair play to him, he did really well, he did the job we wanted him to do, and then to go forward to score the goal, I'm absolutely delighted for him, because Ruairi Forbes is a class player, one of the best players in Ireland. It took that.
"It's just a pity we couldn't keep him there in Ardboe - Derry have a real good player there. You have to plan for boys like that."
Pic: Margaret McLaughlin Caolan Donnelly of Fintona (second from right, at the front) celebrating the Ulster MFC Final triumph with his Tyrone team-mates.
Pic: Margaret McLaughlin
Tyrone's own captain, Eoin McElholm, would have been well-known to the Derry management, as the only surviving starter from last year's All-Ireland MFC Final.
The Loughmacrory player opted for flamboyance too late on. With the Red Hands hanging on to a one-point lead, Trillick wing-back Nathan Ferry turned the tide of Derry pressure, intercepting the ball and then supplying his skipper.
Most would have gone for an 'insurance point' in the second minute of added time, but McElholm crashed in a shot which deflected to the net to seal victory.
"That's just 'Mackers'," said Gerard Donnelly with a smile. "Eoin would say himself, there's wee things, wee mistakes he made; James Murray is a damn good man-marker, he was on him, but you've got to give credit to both the teams, they're 16 and 17 year old lads playing in front of this here. It wasn't good for me, but I'd say the neutrals would have said that was some final there."
Indeed it was, and the Tyrone boss was delighted with his team's performance, even with its flaws: "We survived last week lucky enough [beating Donegal in a semi-final penalty shoot-out], and we just said to them, come here and let loose, play a bit of ball and see where it takes us. And thankfully we did.
"There's lots of things to work on. We butchered a good few chances up there, but so did Derry, and we're just delighted to have won the Ulster Championship."
With the senior final back in its traditional home after two seasons away - 2020 at the Athletic Grounds in Armagh and last year at Croke Park - Donnelly was particularly pleased that the Minors also got their traditional placement as the curtain-raiser to the big match:
"I want to thank the Ulster Council for letting these lads play in front of a big crowd on a big occasion, it's incredible, and fair play to the Ulster Council, fair play to Clones…
"It's just dream stuff. I was laughing with Gerard Devine there: we've lived two of our dreams - we've driven into Croke Park on All-Ireland Final day and we've driven up Clones hill with a Garda escort on Ulster Final. If we don't win another game, that's it, we've lived two of our dreams."
McElholm had netted Tyrone's first goal, to put the Red Hands into a lead they only lost for one second half minute, but they could never pull clear of Derry, despite getting more goals.
Full-forward Ronan Molloy, who bagged the second, was one of five Donaghmore lads in the starting side, and also one of three sporting 'mullets'.
Their manager laughed at that hairstyle choice, seeing it as another means of the players expressing their personality: "They have to - isn't it just lovely? All we see is bad news stuff, but when you have boys like this, this is a day they're going to remember for the rest of their lives. This is just incredible. They deserve a good story."
As so often happens at Minor level, Tyrone had to almost completely re-build their team this year and Stewartstown man Donnelly acknowledged it had been draining:
"It's not easy, it's never easy, it's a lot of work and a lot of hours and a lot of sleepless nights that all go into it.
"We're all tired, towards the end me and big Gary [Hetherington] were a bit fatigued. We're just delighted to get through it, delighted to win it, and we have to give all credit to Derry as well, because that was some game with both teams going hammer and tongs at it.
"There's a 'back door' here, and I was asked during the week would the fact that there's a back door take a wee bit of the edge off it. That was the answer today, two teams wanted to win."
Monaghan had gone back-to-back at Minor level in 2018-19, but Sunday was the first time Tyrone have retained the title since 2008, so Donnelly was delighted:
"I'm over the moon to win two-in-a-row… Everyone put their shoulder to the wheel, the subs that came in, even the lads that didn't come in, they'll be disappointed they didn't play but this is for everyone.
"You ask yourselves 'Why do we bother with this?', but it's for days like this. The smiles on those lads' faces today just makes it all worthwhile for me."
