'We could never bridge that gap, it's been our story for 60 years' – Gallagher

When asked what has been the secret formula to his side’s constant improvement over the past four years, Dungloe manager Dessie Gallagher takes a long pause before drawing back to a certain game.  

In fact, it was Gallagher’s first league game in charge, having taken over the reins as manager in early 2021.  

With the GAA once again put on hiatus due to Covid-19, it wasn’t until six months into his time as manager at the Rosses club when Dungloe made the journey to Naomh Columba, where his team would come out the right side on a 2-9 to 2-7 scoreline.  

Grabbing what was the club’s first win in almost 18 months, the scenes that followed assured Gallagher that talent was not the element lacking within his squad, but rather the belief in one's self to win.  

“I’ll never forget when we went to play Naomh Columba in our first league match in 2021 and we won it, the boys were hugging like they won the senior championship, and that’s because they went almost 18 months to that point without winning a game,” he said.  

“That day was the stepping stone in giving the players belief that they were good enough to win anything. And from there we got to two intermediate championship finals in-a-row, and once we got back to the senior championship, it was a matter of staying in that competition and seeing how far we could go from there.”  

The road from where Gallagher took them is normally the one less travelled. The steady incline has produced an intermediate win in 2022, pushing Gaoth Dobhair to the limit on their return to the senior championship the following year, and now the history of making a county final.  

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But Gallagher doesn’t sugar-coat the journey either. With injuries and the desire to travel, Dungloe has always been a club with a need to think fast on their feet and plan ahead, and for the Rosses boss, the ambition was simple, to try and make the team better and instill a damning belief into players that he needed to unlock from them.  

“Nobody outside our group thought we could get this far; I always believed it was possible. The players were good enough and I said that to the boys from day one when I took over in 2021. I don’t know if they believed me either but they worked and worked at it and they deserve to be here,” Gallagher said.  

“My ambition when I came in four years ago, it was just to make the club better and make the team better, and the boys bought into it and ran with it. It was just basically taking the challenge step by step and building all the time.”  

In a club that has yielded seven county senior titles in their history, Gallagher and his era grew up in the wake of listening to tales about Dungloe’s past glories, despite never seeing them or being able to replicate them.  

Their club's senior final gap of 60 years is the longest in Donegal’s history, but their failure to bridge those barren years was not for the lack of effort.  

“I was a part of Dungloe teams with some legendary players and every year we went out with the ambition of making a county final and we never did because it’s not an easy thing to do,” Gallagher admitted.  

“Possibly because we had teams like Killybegs, Naomh Columba, St Eunan’s, who were just better than us. We tried to get to a county final but just could never bridge that gap, but that’s been the Dungloe story for 60 years.  

“Lads of my era grew up hearing about championship titles in Dungloe but we unfortunately never saw or experienced one ourselves, and that was with legendary players like Tony Boyle and Raymond Sweeney, and the list goes on.  

“For years we were classed as an okay league team, but now we’re being classed as a championship team and that’s something I’ve never heard of before which is brilliant.”  

For Gallagher, it’s an added special event, having the opportunity to manage his two sons Daire and Odhran on county final day and if he wins adds himself to a unique chapter of being only the fourth father/son combo to win a championship on the one side as manager and player in the history of the senior championship.  

“It’s brilliant to be a part of a team that’s winning games and you can say that you have two sons on the panel.   

Odhran was on the starting team at the beginning of the championship but we just changed things around a little bit that saw him coming out of the starting team.  

“Unfortunately, I don’t get to watch the boys properly because you’re focused on the entire team, but it’s great to be able to create these memories and that’s what we want to be doing.  

“My family is just one family in Dungloe who are enjoying this experience, there’s many more families involved and it’s a fantastic time to be involved.”