A strange sort of rivalry: Donegal and Monaghan have had their moments

Jim McGuinness took the microphone and left the audience in no doubt.

It was a Sunday evening in 2014, a few hours after Donegal had won back the Ulster SFC title.

Twelve months after the rug was pulled from beneath Donegal - the defending All-Ireland and Ulster champions - by Monaghan in the 2013 Ulster final, McGuinness’s men had their provincial crown back.

The win over Monaghan in the 2014 Ulster final meant a lot.

“Today was the day we wanted,” McGuinness said.

“We wanted to be in Clones today and we wanted the opposition we played today.’

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There was a sour taste left in 2013.

“They completely tanked us,” says former Donegal midfielder Martin McElhinney.

“We were coming in with the All-Ireland and us on a crest of a wave.

“We were going for a three-in-a-row in Ulster. We really wanted to be the first Donegal team to do that. Monaghan stopped that on us. They had the better of us physically and in intensity. It really, really hurt us that day.

“After winning back-to-back Ulsters and with the All-Ireland, we were on a pedestal. The manner of that defeat hurt us. We just didn’t show up.”

Mark McHugh’s Ulster final in 2013 lasted just ten minutes after he shipped a heavy hit from Stephen Gollogly that left him in hospital for two nights.

McGuinness kept his counsel until Donegal defeated Laois six days later at Carrick-on-Shannon in a qualifier. At Páirc Seán Mac Diarmada, he cut loose.

“I’m not happy that we have a player with a busted eardrum, sustained major concussion and has a five-centimetre tear in his quad muscle,” he blasted.

“We are not afraid of physicality. However, there’s a difference between physicality and busted eardrums, concussions and serious leg injuries.

“You have a duty of care to your players and I would be fearful that my lads are going to end up on the receiving end of something that is going to cause everybody a lot of pain.”

When their swords crossed in 2014, Donegal didn’t need much in the way of motivation.

Gollogly went in hard on Ryan McHugh and Donegal’s players piled in to stand up their man. A little later, Murphy hit the deck on the sideline just beside the dugouts.

Several Monaghan players attempted to get a word in his ear but Neil Gallagher stood guard over his captain. Donegal reclaimed the provincial title after 70 minutes of pure warfare.

As Maurice Deegan blew his final whistle, Paddy McGrath was on the end of a robust challenge. The Ardara man responded with a ferocious shoulder and a smirk that said it all.

McGuinness’s reaction at the final whistle told the story.

“I think it’s the biggest victory that we’ve had,” McGuinness would later reflect.

Donegal players celebrate their win over Monaghan in the 2014 Ulster final.

“We really wanted to win that game in ’14,” McElhinney says.

“Monaghan were at their peak in those years. We had a lot of big battles with them.

“But we were 100 per cent focussed for them in 2014. We just couldn’t be caught off our guard again. You just knew how much it meant that day.

“We came back after ’13 with a real refocus in the group. We trained harder and we were back at it early.”

During the 2014 Division 2 final, Eamon McGee found himself the butt of a Monaghan man’s joke.

Monaghan were on their way to victory and McGee felt the brunt.

It hit hard.

“The gist of it was that we couldn’t get near them in the last few years,” McGee said three months later before the counties met in the Ulster final.

“Right he was. You don’t want that hanging over you when you finish football. It’s something I never noticed, but unfortunately the stats are there.”

Until the Ulster final of 2014, when Donegal avenged the 2013 final defeat to the Farney county, Donegal hadn’t beaten Monaghan in Championship football since 1983.

Theirs has been a strange sort of a rivalry.

“The sides don’t hate each other, but the temperature never drops below simmering point,” Malachy Clerkin wrote in The Irish Times before a 2016 tussle. “It’s more that a low hum of irritation with each other exists just barely below the surface of their relationship.”

“We played Monaghan a lot in the League and Championship in those years,” McElhinney says. “Monaghan were a side we were always itching to beat, We had the upper hand on Tyrone at the time, but Monaghan were always there too.

“Every game with Monaghan was a tough battle. They had some big men, like Owen Lennon, Dick Clerkin, the Hughes and Conor McManus could throw himself about too.

“One thing about Monaghan was that they were very honest. They were football mad and they gave it everything. There was never any real malice when it came to Monaghan.”

Donegal kicked away the Anglo Celt when their swords crossed with the Farney again in 2015.

The cries of ‘We want Sam’ from the Monaghan hoardes rang in Tir Chonaill ears as they left Clones.

“We missed too many chances,” McElhinney says. “We had four or five wides late in the game. I kicked one myself from the top of the D, we did kick it away.”

In the 1979 Ulster final, Kieran Keeney scored a points in the opening seconds, but as the Monaghan goalkeeper took the kick-out, the band, assembled on the sideline, struck up Amhrán na bhFiann.

Referee Hugh Duggan had ‘forgot’ the pre-match tradition and opted to stop the game and re-start it from scratch, meaning Keeney’s scored the point that never was.

The Ardara native remembered: “No-one really knew what was happening and you were already up at the heat for an Ulster final. I don’t know if what happened was strictly legal, but…”

There have been painful days for Donegal against Monaghan. Just ask Charlie Mulgrew, who sustained a broken jaw following a clash with Jack McCarville in the semi-final of ‘83. Donegal won with Joyce McMullin netting a first-half goal, but it was a day that would be remembered for all the wrong reasons.

“The semi-final was littered with fouling and the conduct was more in common with barbarians,” one report of the game said.

The mercury shattered the thermometer at the end. As Seamus Bonner arched over Donegal’s final point, the Monaghan goalkeeper, Kevin McNeill, was so angered that his side had lost he pushed an umpire into the netting and broke his flag off the upright.

A hatred mightn’t necessarily run deep, but they’ve had their moments.