1985 Ulster Minor winning side have reunion this weekend

Forty years on from an historic Ulster minor championship win in 1985, a reunion of the players will take place this Saturday night in the Bayview Hotel, Killybegs.

Donegal minors won both the championship and the league with Jimmy White as manager, assisted by PJ Buggy and the late Joe ‘Dodo’ Winston.

They overcame Down, Monaghan, Armagh and Cavan to win Ulster but agonisingly lost out to Cork in the All-Ireland semi-final. In their games in Ulster there were some notable names on opposition teams including the current GAA President Jarlath Burns; the Grimley twins of Armagh; Ronan Carolan of Cavan and Gary Mason, John Kelly and Barry Breen of Down.

Speaking to DonegalLive this week, manager Jimmy White said they hope to have 22 or 23 of the 26 man panel at the reunion including Patrick McGovern, who is travelling from New York.

The event is being organised by the players and White expressed gratitude to a few sponsors who made the event possible.


Captain John Cunningham is held shoulder high with the cup Picture: Michael O'Donnell

He is also looking forward to seeing the players again, having not met some of them in quite a while.

“I would have seen some of them afterwards and played against them. By the time I started refereeing when I was 37 most would have been around the 29, 30 mark.”

Asked if he had any stories about refereeing them, he said he couldn’t recall sending many of them off. “There would have been an odd yellow card and an odd fella might have slipped in there with a double yellow.”

1985 was a big year for Donegal as the minors were bridging a 29 year gap to the last (and first) Ulster minor title in 1956. The Vocational Schools won the All-Ireland title while Carrick VS won the Markey Cup and PCC, Falcarragh won the MacLarnon.

“I’ve  said it many times. There were a lot of good things happening in the early ‘80s. Even in 1983 there was a county U-16 team even though it was only arranged for challenge matches. There was nothing competitive.

“I could see then that there was a lot of potential come ‘84 and ‘85. Then with the Vocational success in ‘84 and ‘85, PCC, Falcarragh winning the MacLarnon. And without sounding biased, my own club, Killybegs, won two Ulster minor club titles in ‘84 and ‘85.

“As the trend went, a lot of that ‘85 team were on the ‘87 team that won the All-Ireland U-21 and five or six of the ‘87 panel were on the ‘92 senior panel,” said White.

“To add to that, people say I was the manager, but from day one it was myself, PJ (Buggy) and Joe Winston. We picked the team together. But somebody is appointed manager but that was a county board thing.

“Both PJ and Joe were very successful with their own clubs in that era. Joe was manager of St Eunan’s in ‘83 when they won the senior championship; PJ was doing great things with Aodh Ruadh, both at underage and adult level. There was a lot of positivity about that group of players at that time,” said White, who added that it will be good to see them all again.

And he said the timing was really good with very few fixtures this weekend in Donegal.”

Asked if there were any special memories, White’s thoughts first went to the All-Ireland semi-final defeat.

“Everything about that whole team, not alone did they win the minor championship but they won the Ulster Minor League as well. The thing that we will never forget is the defeat to Cork in the semi-final. That’s still raw 40 years on.

“We would have felt we had a team good enough to win the All-Ireland but that didn’t happen and that’s life. The very fact that a lot of them moved on to higher success says a lot about them, the hunger and character they had.

“I think the performance in the Ulster final (was the highlight). You often talk in the modern day if everybody plays to their potential that you’re in with a good chance. Well that day in the Ulster final we played very, very well. And we had only been stuttering and tripping along in previous games. But in the final everything went well and it was a great result.

“We’ve had always been playing second fiddle to the Derrys and Tyrones. Even back in the ‘80 Vocational School success was regarded as only second grade; MacLarnon was only second grade. Winning Ulster championships at minor and U-21, it puts you up there with the best of them.”

The win was a breakthrough for the county at minor level.

“It was also testament to the clubs in the county. We weren’t providing a lot of underage football until the late 1970s and early ‘80s. In that era Aodh Ruadh were very, very strong in minor and U-21 and the same could be said of St Eunan’s but maybe not as much as Aodh Ruadh. They were getting good product from underage players who were going to college and vocational schools. It was a good foundation for what we got in 1985.

“We’re still not winning as many Ulster minor championships as we might do but at least we didn’t have to wait another 30 years after ‘85 and we’re getting a share of it now. We are challenging more now against Tyrone especially and Derry at minor level.

“We’re also being defeated more times than we’re beating them but we just have to take that and hope for the next big day.”

The championship run began with a preliminary round win over Down and the first few games coincided with the Leaving Cert. “You have to give them credit for balancing that as well.

“I remember Jarlath Burns being on the Armagh minor team that year and Cavan had a significant team as they had come through the side of the draw with Derry and Tyrone. They proved that three years later when they beat us in the Ulster U-21 final when we should have had two U-21s in-a-row.”

One of the regrets from the year was that flying forward Donal Bonner picked up an injury playing for Donegal in the Ulster Junior Championship, which ruled him out.
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“He was playing for Donegal in the junior Ulster championship. Who am I to say he shouldn’t have, but he was a huge loss. If we had had a fully fit Donal Bonner in Croke Park, things could have been different.

“He was so good at around 15, 16, 17. It’s hard to say, but that injury probably ended his career. I could be wrong but he probably didn’t get the sort of medical attention then that they do now. If he had, he could easily have enjoyed success with Donegal seniors in the late ‘80 and ‘90s because he was a flyer.”

Barry Cunningham has unearthed a video tape of the 1985 Ulster final and that will be played  on Saturday night. “I’m really looking forward to the night and meeting the boys again,” said White.


The teams in the Ulster final programme

ULSTER RUN 1985

Ulster Preliminary Round

Donegal 1-7

Down 0-6

Donegal: Emmet Golden; John Joe Doherty, Denis Carbery, Sean McBride; Peter McIntyre, John Cunningham (1-0), Barry McGowan; John Ban Gallagher, Barry Cunningham (0-1); Tommy Ryan (0-2), Dermot Ward (0-1), Donal Bonner (0-1); Stephen McMenamin, Luke Gavigan (0-2), Conor White. Subs: Roger McShane for McMenamin; Diarmaid Keon for White.

Down: Paul Fegan; Mark Mooney, Gary Mason, Liam Brown; Kevin Fitzsimons, John Kelly,  Nigel O'Neill; Barry Breen (0-2), Maurice Somers (0-1); Brian Irwin (0-1), Mark Hamill, Raphael Haughian; Collie Curran, Mark McCartan, Cathal Murray. Subs: Terence O'Toole (0-2) for Murray; Ronan Stokes for Hamill; Tony McMahon for McCartan.

Ulster quarter-final

Donegal 4-11

Monaghan 2-3

Donegal: Emmet Golden; John Joe Doherty, Denis Carbery, Sean McBride; Peter McIntyre, John Cunningham (0-1), Diarmaid Keon; John Ban Gallagher, Barry Cunningham; Tommy Ryan (0-1), Barry McGowan (0-2), Stephen McMenamin (0-1); Roger McShane, Luke Gavigan (0-4), Dermot Ward (1-1). Subs: Conor White (2-1) for McShane; Frank Ward (1-0) for Gallagher; Paschal Cullen for Doherty.

Monaghan: Dermot Murphy; Joe Treanor, John Tibby, Paul Campbell; Paudie Bannigan, Eoin Moore, John Mohan; Gerry Mohan, Eddie Walsh; Owen Hamilton (0-1), Tony Forde, Derek Conlon (0-1); Michael Conlon (1-0), Martin McKenna (1-0), Declan Brennan. Subs: Gerry Hamill for Campbell; Dermot McKenna for Moore.

Ulster semi-final

Donegal 1-8

Armagh 0-8

Donegal: E Golden; JJ Doherty, D Carbery, S McBride; P McIntyre (0-1), J Cunningham (0-1), D Keon; J Gallagher, B Cunningham; T Ryan (0-1), B McGowan, S McMenamin; D Ward (1-2), L Gavigan, C White (0-3). Subs: R McShane for Ryan; E McAuley for McMenamin.

Armagh: J McCann; F Doran, G O'Neill, C Keegan; J McGeary, C Catney, J Grimley; M Grimley, J Burns; E Darbey, A McEvoy (0-1), S Feehan (0-1); S Skelton (0-1), J Reel, S McKeown (0-5). Subs: P Donnelly for Catney; D Harte for Darbey.

Ulster final

Donegal 2-11

Cavan 1-3

Donegal: Emmet Golden; John Joe Doherty, Denis Carbery, Sean McBride; Peter McIntyre, John Cunningham, Diarmaid Keon; John Ban Gallagher, Barry Cunningham (0-4); Tommy Ryan, Barry McGowan (0-1), Stephen McMenamin (1-1); Dermot Ward (0-2), Luke Gavigan (1-2), Conor White (0-1). 

Rest of panel: Danny Gallagher, Pat McGovern, Mark Cleary, Frank Ward, Brendan O Baoghail, Donal Bonner, Roger McShane, Eugene McMenamin, Pascal Cullen, Francis Murray, Eamon McAuley.

Cavan: Eamon McEnroe; John Reilly, David O'Donnell, Brendan Sweeney; Niall Cotter, Joe Donnellan, Pat Sharkey; Vivian Dowd, Dessie Brady; Ronan Carolan, Laurence Brady, Tom Shalvey; Seamus Donohoe, Dessie Cahill, Sean Pearson. Subs: Joe Brady for Donnellan; Tony Talbot for Sharkey; Willie Reilly for Dowd.

The winning Ulster Minor League final team was: Emmet Golden; Pat McGovern, Denis Carbery, Brendan O Baoghail; John Joe Doherty, Eugene McMenamin, Diarmaid Keon; John Ban Gallagher, Roger McShane; Peter McIntyre, Donal Bonner, Stephen McMenamin; Frank Ward, Luke Gavigan, Conor White.

John Paul Barrett, John Monaghan and Sean Reilly were members of the league final panel.