Pride of Place shines through as Dungloe prepare to create their own history

There’s a fine line between those who compete and those who talk about competing.  

When sporting historians eventually get around to writing the story of Dungloe football since the turn of this decade, there will be much postulating as to what exactly happened.  

When the Rosses club ended their long-running 33-year relationship with the Donegal senior championship in 2020 after they fell down to the second tier, it would’ve seemed very unlikely that anyone in GAA circles thought a Dr Maguire Cup decider loomed on their horizon.  

Dungloe aren’t as young and novicey as they were four years ago, having built valuable experience in their two seasons in the Intermediate championship that produced back-to-back final appearances.  

For the club skipper, Conor O’Donnell, he always felt his side had the players to be able to compete with the best, although it was a matter of proving that on the field.   

Since the club’s fall to the second tier in 2020, they have built a steady ship winning the title against Naomh Columba in 2022.  

Last year they maintained their SFC status with a bit to spare and ran neighbours Gaoth Dobhair close in the quarter-final before this season coming from their one-point loss to St Michael’s in round three, to produce wins over St Naul’s, Downings, Glenswilly, and St Michael’s to reach the final decider of the 2024 senior competition.   

“The buzz has been very good since our semi-final win, everyone was delighted, but we are just focusing on the task at hand here now and that is to get ready for our first final in a long time,” O’Donnell told the media at last week’s press night in Convoy.  

“This is new territory for all of us. We got some good experience of finals from our two years at intermediate level, but we know it’s a different ball game now at senior level.”  

For Dungloe, every step has been a learning curve this season under manager Dessie Gallagher, with only Realt na Mara Bundoran in the late 70s and Glenswilly in the mid-2000s making such a quantum leap from Intermediate champions to county senior finalists in such a short space of time.  

This season, their Division 2 league campaign saw them finish in seventh position with six wins, six losses, and one draw, far from the CV of county finalists in the past.  

But for O’Donnell and Dungloe, he cites each game as a building block toward a certain goal.  

“I think the nature of championship football is that when you go into the knockout stages it’s a higher quality because you’re playing better teams, and no doubt against St Eunan’s, it’s going to have to go up another level again.  

“Slowly but surely, we have improved and we’re happy enough with our progress through it. We’ve just been taking it one game at a time, and that’s all we can do as a club. If you take your eye off the ball, you don’t know where you’ll end up, so, it’s all about small building blocks for us and moving forward.  

“I think Dessie and the entire management deserve great credit for putting belief back into our team. They’ve done such hard work behind the scenes, and now that we’re in this position, we have to make the most of it and we intend to do that.”  

Despite leading throughout in their last two championship matches against Glenswilly and St Michael’s respectively, many would’ve felt it was possibly a bridge too far for the Rosses club.   

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Yet their willingness to dig deeper than perhaps any other team this season through an avowal of trust in one another is perhaps the reason for their unexpected appearance as one of the last two teams standing.  

“We worried at times when St Michael’s had us under real pressure. The last few minutes in that game seemed to go on forever when we were under pressure, but we’re just thankful that we were leading on the scoreboard when the final whistle went,” O’Donnell said.  

A first final senior title for the Dungloe men since 1958 looms on the horizon, and the privilege of leading his side on county final day is not lost on Donnell, but something he and his team are trying to stay humble about without getting caught up in the emotion.  

“We’re trying to stay away from the whole buzz and keep our feet on the ground, that’s not easy but we have to try,” O’Donnell said.   

“It’s a great honour for us to be able to go out and represent our club in a county final and we’ll hope we can do the people of the town proud and see what end of the result we end up on.”  

They've set the championship alight so often this season, can they do it one more time when it matters most?