Southwest man Pauric O’Donnell will be cheering for Abbey on Saturday

“It’s a novel pairing and it’s great; it’s great for everybody and for football in the county,” says Pauric O’Donnell, a teacher in the Abbey Vocational School, Donegal Town but whose roots are firmly in Donegal Southwest and in Naomh Columba.

O’Donnell will be cheering on his pupils from the Abbey on Saturday as they take on Donegal Southwest in the MacRory Cup semi-final which is scheduled for 2 pm in Fr Tierney Park, Ballyshannon.

For the first time in the history of the prestigious MacRory Cup, two Donegal teams entered and you would have probably got big odds that both would reach the last four. But not only has that happened, but we now have an all-Donegal semi-final with a guaranteed finalist, which will bridge a gap back to St Eunan’s in 1961.

O’Donnell has been involved with teams at all levels in the Donegal Town school and is really looking forward to Saturday’s encounter. And while he has mixed views on amalgamations he feels it has worked well for Donegal Southwest this year.

“That was great for the lower level schools. It gives the opportunity for the players to play at that high level and they are still representing their own schools, which is what it is all about.

“It’s good for everyone and it’s a good standard of football so we will see how it goes on Saturday.”

The semi-final brings together two panels of players who will be well familiar with each other. You have Oisin Doherty of Abbey playing against his cousin, Ethan Byrne of Southwest.

“There’s loads of connections between the teams and I suppose the big one would be Donegal development squads. They would all be quite familiar with each other from those squads.

“Both teams mirror each other; you have really elite players on both teams. 

“I suppose for us, we are one school and we are playing against five schools in a way, which is interesting. On paper, you would think that our boys will be up against it,” said O’Donnell, who agreed that Abbey would be regarded as having a strong offensive unit while Southwest would be built on a strong defence.

You have the likes of Conor McCahill,  the Carrs and Kevin Muldoon driving a strong Abbey attack while the Southwest have the Gaoth Dobhair defenders that formed most of the Donegal minor team last year.

“I suppose if you look at the two quarter-finals, the teams would be quite similar in the way they play. The Southwest team are really well set up and they work well as a unit together.

“I suppose it will be up to our boys to see if they can find holes in that.”

But based on the two semi-finals O’Donnell feels it should be a good contest.

“Look, when you beat the All-Ireland champions of two years in-a-row (Omagh CBS), that's bound to give the Southwest huge confidence this weekend in fairness to them.

“Our boys feel that they are very much there on merit. They won the MacLarnon last year and went into unknown territory this year. They have got themselves to a place, I suppose a few years ago, we were always making progress but you never really knew if you were going to be good enough to play at MacRory level.”

There may well have been even stronger Abbey VS teams that didn’t get a chance to play at this level, but O’Donnell says that’s how it pans out sometimes. “There is a great opportunity now to make the final.”

Bridging a gap back to the last Donegal MacRory finalist in 1961 (St Eunan’s)  will be a major breakthrough for schools’ football but going forward O’Donnell is not so sure that amalgamations can be sustained.

“It’s a possibility but it is very dependent. This was trialled in Inishowen and it didn’t work out after a few years. The first year of anything is probably the best. To try and put the structures in place then to continue that on (is difficult).

“To be honest, we played at MacLarnon last year and this is MacRory and both competitions have the same prestige. The MacLarnon Cup is very much sought after as well. It carries huge prestige, especially when you travel into the north.

“I think it is a very good level and if schools can play in that competition as a stand-alone school, I don’t see the need for them to be amalgamating.”

The Abbey VS school lost up to two thirds of the team that won last year’s MacLarnon so it is impressive for them to be in the last four of the MacRory.

“Yeah, and we would be hoping to be competing again next year, regardless of how this year ends up. We will compete in the MacRory for as long as we can now and if the time comes we will have no problem going back down to MacLarnon. It’s important for the school to stay as a unit.

“It is also good for developing players. It would be very easy to go along with other schools, but it’s about developing all the players. We have 28 of a panel and they are all being developed this year,” said O’Donnell, who said the clubs will benefit as well and in turn they have given great support to the school.

And while the numbers at the Abbey VS (960 pupils) is similar to some of the big schools in the MacRory Cup in the North, the age profile is usually much different.

“The numbers might be the same but the age profile would be mostly a year older. A lot of the teams we would play (in MacRory) would be U-19 and would have had a lot of last year’s minors. We have a couple of minors in our team,” said O’Donnell, who explained that a lot of schools in the North do well up to U-16 but then the better players join the big schools to do their A levels and also for football.

“The school system works differently in the North. Down in the south, you generally go to the school where you’re from. You don’t generally move out of that,” said O’Donnell, who said Omagh CBS had players from 13 clubs in their team against Southwest while St Colman’s had players from well over 20 clubs in their panel for the quarter-final against Abbey VS (who are working of just three clubs, Four Masters, St Naul’s and Naomh Brid).

“Those boys wouldn’t be Colman’s students the whole way through. They would have done the GCSEs elsewhere and would have then moved in for the football and A levels. That is not in place on this side of the border.

“I suppose the amalgamations is the only way of counteracting that in a way.”

The other big difference in the playing field for the Donegal schools is the support systems that are in place in the North, where you could have a backroom team of six or seven on matchdays, while the likes of the Abbey would have two, three at most.

“We would see a lot of the schools in the North, even from U-14 up, they would have paid coaches. We played St Pius, Magherafelt many times and Enda Muldoon is their full-time coach, paid by the Derry Co Board. We don’t have those resources here.

“It would be good to look at putting more supports into stand-alone schools like ourselves, especially if you are playing at MacRory level.”

Abbey VS are now on the Ulster Schools’ map and the prestige from winning a MacLarnon and reaching the last four of the MacRory has helped out.

“It’s very unheard of. You are talking of a school with three feeder clubs. Even to win a MacLarnon with that amount of clubs is a very rare thing. Everybody in the North that we meet now, they say that to us. They are in awe of that. They are a very special group at the minute.

“It is all about building on their success now and feeding it down to the younger players and trying to develop it out more in the school,” says O’Donnell, who added that it was great the semi-final was on a Saturday as it allows everybody in the schools the opportunity to attend.