Donegal v Armagh: A regular rivalry never far from boiling point

It was Friday the 13th in Newry and Gary Walsh was counting down the time.

An accountant with the Larry Goodman group, Walsh was due to head for home in Ballyshannon when a phone call came around noon.

Soon, Walsh was on a plane to England alongside a manager. One of ABP Foods' biggest clients was going bust.

“I was sent to try to get money out of him,” Walsh says. Two days later, he was scheduled to keep goal for Donegal in the Ulster final against Armagh.

Now, he found himself at Smithfield Market and in all sorts of races against the ticking clock.

“It wasn't the best of places to find yourself in,” he says.

“It was a case of trying to take what you can out of it. At times like that, you'd maybe have to try to get lorries to come and take whatever to cover the debt.”

Walsh missed a team meeting with the Donegal squad on the Friday night.

Twenty four hours later, Walsh went straight to Bundoran and joined manager Brian McEniff at Gaelic Park “for a few kicks and handling exercises.”

On July 15, 1990, Walsh kept a clean sheet as Donegal won 0-15 to 0-14; champions of Ulster for only the fourth time.

That Clones afternoon 34 years ago was bubbling nicely but Tony Boyle – who had yet to play competitively for Donegal – was growing restless.

McEniff, back for a latest sojourn in the hot seat, drafted a 19-year-old Boyle into his panel after the Dungloe youngster came back from America in 1989.

His Donegal career – which would eventually span 107 games – almost ended, at his own behest, before it began, but the 1990 Ulster final offered Boyle his first taste.

“I was chomping at the bit,” Boyle recalled. “I was mad for action.”

Boyle headed to warm up in front of the hill, but soon began to lose patience.

Boyle took matters into his own hands and informed Noreen Doherty, the county secretary, of an impending change.

“McEniff didn’t seem as if he was going to do anything. At the next break in play, I bolted on without anyone telling me.”

Boyle set up a crucial point for Manus Boyle in the closing stages as Donegal took another big step towards their ultimate goal.

It was still two summers before Sam Maguire would voyage north westerly, but the building blocks were being laid.

Many in Donegal will point to a qualifier annihilation by Armagh in Crossmaglen in 2010 as being a real turning point. It marked the entry of Jim McGuinness to the senior manager's role and paved the way for a glorious era.

Wind back to 1988 and an Ulster opener against Armagh in Clones also proved to be a key point in it all.

June 12, 1988 stands out in the annals of Irish sport: it was the day Ray Houghton scored to give the Republic of Ireland a win over England in Stuttgart in 1988.

“The biggest cheer came when the crowd heard that Ireland had scored,” John Joe Doherty, who made his Championship debut that afternoon, would remember some years later.

Paul Callaghan, later to become Donegal's goalkeeper, was in the crowd with some friends from Burt and mischievously started a rumour that England had equalised.

In the era before smart phones and on-the-go access to such info, many left Clones believing Callaghan's tall tale. It was about the only thing to make Donegal smile with Armagh blasting to a 2-10 to 0-8 win.

“One of the worst performances in living memory,” scathed Damian Dowds and Donal Campbell in Sam's For The Hills some 25 years later.

“We got something of a revitalisation from 1989 and all of that moved us on into '92,” says Walsh.

“I was left off the squad in '87 and in '88 things weren't great. It was all down to attitude, I think. Armagh gave us a good beating that day, but Armagh were a good side.

“Our own camp wasn't in great shape and some boys were pissing about, but we showed in the following years what could be done if everyone put the knee to the wagon.

“A lot of it was down to player attitude. If you take the 1982 All-Ireland-winning U21 team, they were knocking around for a few years and the '87 team was coming through. That was the backbone of '92 and we didn't even know it.”

A look back at the 1988 game shows that 18 of the players used by Tom Connaghan in the Armagh defeat would be All-Ireland winners only four years later.

It was something of a similar tale from the crumbled Donegal McGuinness inherited in 2010; just two years later, most climbed the steps of the Hogan Stand.

“Jim has turned Donegal around with attitude, effort and just buying into it,” Walsh says.

“I thought this might've taken Jim another year to really build things. It was a bonus to get out of Division 2 in the first year and I would say that Donegal are maybe ahead of schedule.

“Confidence is what this is all about -and momentum. They have taken real belief from Jim and they're clearly fitter.

“Ryan McHugh is a revelation this year, Ciaran Moore is in as young blood and been outstanding and other players are coming back in at the right time.

“There is real positivity about the place and you can see that Jim has the plan.”

In the years from 2002 to 2007, Donegal and Armagh met every year in the Championship. There were seven meetings with Armagh winning five and a drawn encounter in 2004 thrown in.

“When a team without a plan meets a team that is so well drilled to plan, the outcome is kind of inevitable,” Brendan Devenney recalled of that period.

“It was a wee bit personal. I got wild angry at the Armagh thing. They kept cutting off channels and had three men around you to tackle. At that stage, there weren't many teams doing it. It's annoying to think that we were so tactically inept.”

In 2004, Donegal were reduced to 12 men – Eamon McGee, Brian Roper and Adrian Sweeney were all sent off – by the time Devenney landed a late goal.

Armagh steam-rolled to a 3-11 to 1-10 win and Joe Brolly, speaking on RTE, likened Devenney's goal to 'the wasp stinging the elephant'.

Devenney did get a late goal to give Donegal a dramatic win in 2007 on a scorching afternoon in Ballybofey.

“We didn't deserve to win any of them,” he said.

“Even the game we did beat them, Armagh were on the money, tactically and every way. They knocked us about that day and looked like they were ready for another All-Ireland push.

“Armagh had the strength training and they had the system. Donegal would need to have played them 10 times to beat them once – and even that was only a maybe. Everything Armagh did was based on winning a football match.

“Donegal was the perfect team for them to keep playing and keep beating. We were just too nice to play against.”

Donegal and Armagh have always been able to serve up some sharp encounters. Controversy has never been far away. There was the 2014 'flying doctor' episode at Croke Park, an incident that involved Donegal doctor Kevin Moran and Aaron Findon.

"My overriding concern is always and only the safety of the players on the field, and in that particular case, my sole aim was to protect Karl Lacey,” Mr Moran said the following week.

There was a tempestuous meeting in Letterkenny in 2022, a year that closed for Donegal at the hands of Armagh and a 3-17 to 0-16 loss in Clones.

Anyway, who said defensive football was a modern creation?

Donegal hosted Armagh in Ballyshannon in the Ulster Championship of 1928. A crowd of over 2,000 witnessed Armagh leave with a 1-8 to 1-4 win on a day when Donegal trailed by 1-5 to no score at half-time.

“They adopted defensive rather than aggressive tactics,” the Democrat reported 96 years ago. “Pressure, however, was never so strenuous as to warrant a whole-time defence and with a little more attacking in the early stages, Donegal might have done better.”

The year previous, the Democrat outlined that 60 supporters from Ballyshannon and 30 from Bundoran travelled on the excursion train to Armagh with the Donegal team.

Donegal lost 0-8 to 1-1 and the reporter bemoaned Donegal's greed for goals: “Instead of all the time looking for goals, had they tried for points against Armagh, the result might have been different.”