St Eunan's hope to learn from past Ulster championship heartbreak

The bodies of St Eunan’s players will no doubt recover well from their county final celebrations when they make the step up to the Ulster Club Championship next month.  

It’s a competition that hasn’t been kind to the St Eunan’s men down through the years. There have been a lot of near misses and bad performances, and they hope there’s been a new leaf turned, as the Letterkenny side prepares for a championship that has been a Donegal club graveyard for so many years.  

There’s no exact science as to why Donegal clubs have failed so often at this level, with St Joseph’s and Gaoth Dobhair the only two teams to make that quantum leap in capturing Ulster glory.  

Former Donegal and St Eunan’s player Conall Dunne was so often a part of those unfortunate days and feels there are a combination of reasons why his side and other Donegal teams could never make that break.

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“I think you have a better chance of going for Ulster club glory if you’re consistently winning your county championship, I feel that’s a big one,” the six-time county championship winner said.  

“For us in St Eunan’s, we won three county titles in-a-row from 2007 to 2009, and there were chances there that unfortunately, we left behind us in Ulster  

“But before those years I feel we would win a championship here and there and you weren’t really prepared for Ulster because it was so hard coming out of Donegal.  

“I think when you look at Kilcoo now, or even Crossmaglen back when I was playing, they were consistently winning their county title, and because there’s a great chance they know they’re going to win it, they probably don’t celebrate too much because they’re preparing for Ulster. 

“Tyrone is probably similar to Donegal in just how competitive their championship is. They have a new winner in the county almost every year, but I don’t think they have a particularly good record in the Ulster club championship, so there has to be some correlation there.  

“I just feel if you’re winning your own championship year-on-year then you’re building towards Ulster earlier.”  

Dunne looks back at those near misses and cites 2008 as the year that got away from them in St Eunan’s.  

Having walked through the county final with an eight-point win over Termon, the Letterkenny men felt the season was set to give Ulster a real go, only to be stopped by Crossmaglen in the semi-final stages on an 0-11 to 0-8 point scoreline.  

It was a day that was nearly theirs, until it wasn’t, despite leading for the majority of the match.  

“I think when I look at our performances in Ulster down through the years, there were a lot of near misses,” Dunne explained.

“Our best season was probably 2008, that was a period when we were really steamrolling through the Donegal championship, but unfortunately at that time, Crossmaglen was on the scene and beat us in a semi-final.  

“They were a great team, but having said that, I remember being three points up and we had a goal chance from Ross Wherity saved, and that would’ve put us six points ahead at half-time.  

“We also played that day without Brendan Devenney who was out with a punctured lung from the quarter-final win against Clonoe, and when it was up against us in the second half and we needed leaders, I think Brendan would’ve carried us over the line.”  

While Dunne always felt his St Eunan’s side were good enough to challenge the best out there, he felt other teams outside Donegal had a unique ability to see games out to the end, both tactically and mentally, something he feels it took Donegal teams to get the hang of.  

“Crossmaglen had a squad that day they were able to spring from the bench, which maybe we didn’t have. But at the same time, while we probably were good enough to beat them that day, in other seasons we probably didn’t have the application or the tactics to get over the line,” he said.  

“I think teams in the North were a bit ahead of Donegal teams. We played more off the cuff, so, there’s never one easy answer as to why we never made the break, but it is what it is.  

“That semi-final in ’08 was probably the hardest one to take because it just seemed in other years, we never performed when it came to Ulster. Our St Eunan’s teams in other seasons were probably not as good as the team in ’08 but there were still years like in 2009 and 2014 where we just didn’t turn up on the day.”  

And what of this current St Eunan’s side?  

“I think this current St Eunan’s side has lots of potential. I mean they’ve come through the county without really hitting top gear for 60 minutes,” Dunne said.  

“We do see it in patches like the second half of the county final which was probably Eunan’s at their best. The fact that the potential is in them is great, but it’s just about finding that extra gear and they’ll have to do that if they want to progress in Ulster.  

“I think the fact that St Eunan’s has a squad, that is going to be really positive for them now going forward. I even see with the management, it’s not a case of just picking your best fifteen, it’s about using players at certain times and trying to have men fresh to see games out and I think St Eunan’s has been doing that really well this season.”