Fanad-Swilly: A new stage for a great Donegal rivalry

Once, they were kings.

Tales of yore will be in the air by Sheephaven Bay on Sunday when Fanad United and Swilly draw swords at Traigh-A-Loch.

Fanad, with their two FAI Intermediate Cups, and Swilly, twice FAI Junior Cup winners, meet in Division One of the Donegal League.

Fanad, the record 14-times Ulster Senior League champions, stepped back to junior football again in September 2020 with Swilly having withdrawn from the intermediate grade in the spring of 2019.

Swilly won Division Two in the 2019/20 season while Fanad were slotted into the second tier meaning the old foes are back in the same division again.

“Fanad-Swilly was always a game I enjoyed playing in,” says Fanad United manager and former player Arthur Lynch.

“There is always great banter with the Swilly support. There is great rivalry and great banter between the teams,.

“I remember playing Swilly in a Cup final at Ballyare when John O’Connor had them, they were in really good shape that time. We won 3-0 and it took a bit of doing.

“There is a lot of new faces no on both sides and the old rivalry is long gone. if you look at the teams now, it’s up to them to make their own records. They’re working hard here at Fanad and we can’t ask for much more than that.”

Arthur Lynch during his Fanad United playing days

Connor Gormley is back on Lennonside after a spell at Letterkenny Rovers while Kieran Boyle, the Swilly manager, has also signed defender Ciaran Kelly from Letterkenny.

Lynch smiles as he recalls another game between the two former leading lights of Donegal football.

“We went one day with a stacked side, six men on the bench and Swilly started with ten,” he says. “They had a man landed late and got a 1-1 draw. That was one thing about Swilly, they never lay down and always had that never-say-die thing about them.”

Fanad are sitting neatly a point behind the joint leaders, St Catherine’s and Kerrykeel 71, as they go into this weekend’s joust. Fanad have two games in hand, but Lynch isn’t taking too much for granted.

Marc Walsh signs for Dungannon Swifts

The Loughanure man was with Derry City in 2021.

Lynch was a central cog in successful Fanad teams under the guidance of Eamonn McConigley and Ollie Horgan, a formidable presence at the heart of the rearguard for what seemed like an age.

“We’ve given ourselves an opportunity to be in the mix,” Lynch says. “We have more home-based players now, maybe only two or three away. Before this, we would train on a Friday night at 8 o’clock with half-a-dozen boys getting off a bus.

“We’re getting good numbers out at training and have brought men like Mark McConigley, Enda Coll, Colm McGonigle back - work reasons have allowed them to come home again. They have bedded in well and Oisin Langan coming back from Cockhill was a good boost for us too.

“We have 13 League games left and there’ll definitely be twists and turns before it’s all over. It feels a lot more enjoyable already, though.”

As founder members of the Ulster Senior League in 1986, Fanad’s decision to pull out of the intermediate grade felt like a jolt at the time. The Intermediate Cup winners in 1988 and 1995, Fanad’s star dust waned and they took a difficult decision to return to junior football, following that of Swilly a year previously.

“It was a big decision for both clubs,” Lynch says.

“When it was decided, it wasn’t met with a whole lot of opposition. The players were looking for a fresh challenge and the club feels like it has been reinvigorated.

“It felt that we became stale. We’re under no illusions where we are at - in a really competitive Division One with a serious amount of derbies and no easy games - but we just want to do as well as we can.

“We’re as good off the pitch now as on it. There is a freshness and the big thing is that there is more variation to games with more teams in the League.

“We were losing players and not getting them back, but the difference now is that we were able to train and train well over the New Year period there.”

Lynch played briefly for Swilly in the late 1990s during Danny McConnell’s spell as manager at Swilly Park.

The landscape for both has changed since then, but some of the old spice will be in the Fanad air on Sunday.

Lynch says: “We’re expecting a tight game on Sunday. Swilly have been a bit hampered this year, playing their games away with the effort going into a new pitch at Swilly Park. You can’t underestimate that, but it’ll be a tough one for us on Sunday."