BACK in March former Tyrone defender Philip Jordan was reminiscing about his career when the topic of past Tyrone-Donegal matches came up.
Before the sides met in the 2011 Ulster semi-final, Tyrone were reigning provincial champions. They still had their sights firmly set on another All-Ireland. Donegal were reinvigorated under Jim McGuinness, but nobody knew exactly what was coming.
Tyrone found out first hand that day. The Armagh-Tyrone domination of Ulster football which had stretched over 13 years was over. A new team was about to bring another fierce and distinct aura to the soul of Ulster football. The game was incredibly tense and hard-hitting. It was total trench warfare. Tyrone were held to 0-9. Donegal only managed eight scores, but it was enough to officially launch the McGuinness crusade.
Tyrone had patented much of the template of modern football, but Donegal represented a new game. A new way. “We were coming off the field that day thinking ‘What the hell happened there?” said Jordan. “You were saying to yourself, ‘This is a different way of defensive football’.”
Tyrone couldn’t say they hadn’t seen it coming. When the sides met in the league earlier that season in Omagh, Donegal restricted Tyrone to just 0-6. Tyrone only managed a solitary point in the second half. When Donegal turned them over again in Clones five months later, it established a trend that still holds. Donegal also beat Tyrone in the 2012 and 2013 Ulster championships. When the sides met in a crucial league game two months ago, Donegal swatted Tyrone aside with the back of their hand, limiting Tyrone to just 0-6 again, and winning by 10 points.
That game effectively relegated Tyrone. It was confirmed a week later when they drew with Kerry. Tyrone played very positively that day, really attacking the match, but they spent most of the league campaign playing an ultra defensive style. In some games, they played 15 men behind the ball. Was that designed with Sunday’s Ulster championship opener against Donegal in mind?
Certain games this spring, especially the slugfest against Monaghan, added to the evidence postulated by Armagh and Kerry in last year’s championship that Donegal struggle when teams tactically mirror their style. Neither team was expected to unveil a system for their championship match-up, but whatever Tyrone tried against Donegal in March, it didn’t work. The result extended Donegal’s winning streak over Tyrone in league and championship since 2011. Yet nobody is expecting anything other than another dog-fight when they square up again on Sunday.
In so many ways, this game has all the potential to start the championship summer in either a welter of excitement or a fit of rage. Maybe it’s just the optics, but Ulster football remains the ultimate GAA marketing paradox. Honesty and intrigue are the hallmarks of the brand, but its negative image continually makes it as much of a hard sell as an easy one. It irritates Ulster people to hear everyone else giving out about their football, but they have got used to paying no heed.
They just keep looking forward to the next local skirmish, the next big game. Back in January, the throw-in of the Armagh-Tyrone Dr McKenna Cup clash had to be delayed by 30 minutes as 8,463 people filed through the gates. When the game finally begun, all hell broke loose; four players were sent off, with 15 more cards also dished out.
A game of such savage intensity and heavy hitting on January 4 would have been idiosyncratic in any other province. In Ulster though, there’s always something to play for. If the McKenna Cup gets their blood pumping that vigorously, imagine what the championship does to their system? Imagine how psyched Tyrone will be on Sunday to avoid a fourth championship defeat in five seasons to a county they used to beat for fun?
The chaos and manic competitiveness of the Ulster championship often encapsulates its terrible beauty. Not everyone is taken by that appeal, but Ulster is still the only provincial show in town. Despite the progress of other counties, Cork and Kerry still own Munster. Leinster is locked down by Dublin. Connacht is more open, but it still carries none of the real intrigue of Ulster.
Ulster is more competitive now than at any other time since 2001. The province’s medium to long-term All-Ireland prospects don’t look as positive as they were at the outset of the last decade, but most teams still want to avoid the majority of Ulster opposition like the plague.
Many might not want to admit it, but most counties have also been forced to adapt to the template established by Ulster teams, or die. “You'd still hear it from a small element within Kerry supporters accusing Tyrone of starting the current culture of football with their northern-style game,” said Dara O Cinnéide a few months back. “There is no northern-style football. We're all it."
Donegal just accelerated that change under McGuinness and, like it or loathe it, Ulster continues to set the agenda. There are four other championship matches on this weekend, but there is only one real show in town. The atmosphere will be charged in Ballybofey. The fear of defeat, especially for Tyrone, will sharpen the serrated edge of the rivalry. That constant tension still neatly encapsulates the jagged beauty of a province that has done so much to define modern football.
