ABOUT a year ago, Joe Brolly told us that Donegal were “a footballing superbug” with no known cure.
He was left to tiptoe away from that one, like a reveller deleting his phone history the morning after the debauchery before. In 2013, the Donegal bug proved about as dangerous as its Y2K equivalent, Monaghan and Mayo as nonplussed as people turning on their computers on the first morning of the fresh millennium.
It was a spectacularly inaccurate prediction but we forget that few people emptied their bank account to wager on Brolly being wrong. Last August, Donegal were the fancy of many to beat Mayo and we saw no betting slips foretelling a double-digit loss in that game for the reigning All-Ireland champions.
All of us are guilty of sometimes acting as if hind and foresight are identical twins. So, tell us now, rather than in September: are Donegal “back”?
Well, if “back” means being involved at the business end of the championship, then yes, because we do not need much foresight to assume they will be much too good for Fermanagh or Antrim, and are therefore already assured of a place in the last 12. If “back” means competing with Dublin or Mayo for Sam Maguire, we think not, but like Brolly, we were born without the ability to see into the future.
More to the point, the question assumes they were somehow away, as if a narrow defeat to Monaghan and one nightmare outing on Jones’ Road signalled the death a team, rather than their season.
Sunday’s victory in Celtic Park was no more or less impressive than last year’s win at the same stage against Tyrone. Both games followed a similar pattern: Tyrone and Derry had the better of the first half, were destroyed in the third quarter, and battled manfully to no avail thereafter.
The reminder issued in Derry that this Donegal team are really quite good at winning championship games already has enemies of their ultra-defensive football muttering in disgust and hoping that Jim McGuinness’ team has no luck except the bad kind.
We have expressed distaste in the past for the way they approach the game, so it was surprising to find ourselves feeling upbeat as we watched events unfold at Celtic Park.
The reason is easy: in a season that seems primed to unfold along utterly predictable lines, a return to 2011-2012 levels of Donegal danger, however unlikely that is, would be welcome.
And there’s more. Wasn’t there something false spring about the succession of six-goal-and-30-odd point shootouts that everyone professes to love so much? It is not that we are adverse to a high-scoring thriller now and then, but we do not agree that more scores is equivalent to higher quality.
Our favourite football match of the modern era was Tyrone versus Armagh in the 2005 All-Ireland semi-final; it finished 1-13 to 1-12.
Every sport needs a balance between attack and defence. The many-scores-equals-much-entertainment theory is never applied to soccer, where it is obvious that both a 2-1 and a 4-3 game can have merit.
So it is in football, where watching great teams such as Tyrone and Armagh at their brutal peak is, to us at least, just as enthralling as watching Colm Cooper pick apart Dublin’s man-marking lapses, while his team contrives to concede 3-18.
There is something fascinating about watching attackers of the quality of Mark Lynch, Colm McFadden and Patrick McBrearty shut down, because in that context, scores such as Murphy’s wonder point from the sideline or Niall Holly’s glorious curling effort only gain in value.
Credit, too, to Karl Lacey, Gareth McKinless and Dermot McBride, the outstanding defenders on Sunday, for it is good to see backs have a function in the game beyond showing up and getting roasted.
Donegal tip the balance more towards defence and counterattack than perhaps any team before them. But whatever you think about the moral value of such an approach, there can be no denying that it is interesting.
Those who value only attack tell us the opposite: that no one will pay to watch such rubbish. The evidence suggests the opposite. Donegal’s infamous 2011 All-Ireland semi-final with Dublin attracted more than 700,000 viewers. On Sunday, Celtic Park was full for the first time in two decades.
When they play Tyrone, and if and when they pitch up in Croke Park in August, all of us with an interest in football will be glued, and it will be the clash in styles that will attract us.
That, and the knowledge that Donegal, though probably no All-Ireland winning superbug, remain a pest, a wasp that might yet have a nasty sting left for a more fancied rival.
See More: Championship, Comment & Analysis, Donegal, Football
