Ricky Gallagher hoping Termon can use past experiences as a launchpad for Sunday

This Sunday will mark 35 months to the day since Termon last played a match in the senior championship, when they were relegated to the second tier of Donegal football by Realt na Mara, on a cold dark night in Convoy. 

Team captain Ricky Gallagher, who has been a mainstay in the Termon dressing room for almost a decade, has no doubt, there are matches that still chew away at his psyche, and that relegation game must definitely be one of them.  

With five minutes to go in that game against the Seasiders, the Termon skipper raised a white flag to put his side two in front. 

But with extra-time needed and a late surge of scores from Bundoran, the final score saw Termon dumped to Intermediate football for the first time in nine years. 

All the while, the last three seasons have seen the men from the Burn Road go from strength to strength, as they built a new side from the ground up, consisting of younger players from the underage ranks who have a bundle of experience in big final days.  

“It’s our first adult final since we were last in the intermediate decider in 2012, but a lot of our lads have since played in U-16, minor, U-21, and Ulster underage finals, so a lot of the young players are no strangers to big finals and big days out,” Gallagher told Donegal Live.  

“It might be strange for all the older lads who haven’t been in finals a lot before, apart from Daire McDaid who played in the 2012 final, but thankfully the younger boys have been in finals before but we know the intermediate final will be a new test.” 

Coming up against a Naomh Columba side who have experienced an intermediate final heartbreak as recently as 2022 when they lost to Dungloe, Termon on the other hand can take great confidence having beaten their opponents in the opening round of the championship early this season. 

But Gallagher looks at finals as a different animal, where everything must click on the day, and with past form having very little impact on proceedings. 

“I think finals are really a complete clean slate,” he said. “I don’t think form really carries into finals, we’re hoping it does, but no doubt Naomh Columba will have their own set-up that we’ll have to deal with. 

“When we played them in the opening round of the championship this year, we got two early goals which probably ruined their whole gameplan that they probably had worked on to beat us.  

“It forced them to come out then and play against their natural way of playing, so I don’t think it’s a fair reflection of how they can play and we’ll be expecting a different challenge on Sunday.” 

Having tallied 9-60 in their six intermediate championship games, Termon looks like a force to be reckoned with in the forward line, but it hasn’t always been plain sailing with them being brought to the brink by both Burt and Red Hughs in the early stages of the championship, with the men from the Burn Road escaping with one-point wins on each occasion. 

But they eventually rediscovered their scoring form in the semi-final when they eased past Naomh Muire on a 2-15 to 1-8 scoreline. 

“It’s been instilled in us all year that if we do win the ball, then we play completely off the cuff until we’re forced to play the defensive football, that normally we all have to play at some point like all teams,” Gallagher said. 

“But I think we’re allowed to play with a bit of freedom; to go at teams and try and put the ball into the net or over the bar, we’re just thinking about scoring when in possession.” 

He contrasts that positive, forward-thinking mindset in the team to when Termon played in the senior championship, citing their drop to intermediate as perhaps a blessing in disguise in terms of rebuilding the team, without ever saying it. 

“Even at the start of this season, we had a completely different mindset to the one we had for three or four years previous, where it was just about surviving,” he admitted. “That’s a bad feeling to be starting a season knowing that from the off, but that was the reality at the time. 

“You were putting in so much work just trying to survive in the senior championship, whereas this year it’s so much more enjoyable, where you’re going to train with the ambition of trying to win silverware or help the team progress. 

“We all know that winning is a good habit but for now it’s just about this one game on Sunday and we can focus on the future of the club at some other stage.” 

Gallagher feels that finals are a clean slate and take on lives of their own, but he hopes past experiences and recent momentum will have an impact as he leads his team out this weekend, for what he hopes won’t be the final time in 2024.