For once, a mid-October Ulster SFC draw can’t come quick enough - Eamon McGee 

Eamon McGee says interest in the 2024 Ulster SFC is already at fever-pitch and it’s still only September. 

Following last season’s championship rejig, many were of the opinion that the end was neigh for the provincial campaigns - and that the real football would now only start when the new 16-team round-robin All-Ireland group stages began.

But it’s hard to flick a switch on instinct, tribalism and, truth be told, bad blood. And the unique and competitive edge Ulster holds over the rest meant that the Anglo Celt battle was again attritional. 

Derry are the reigning back-to-back kingpins but Jim McGuinness’ return to the Donegal hot seat last month felt like a seismic moment.  

However, Mickey Harte’s spectacular switch from Louth to the Oak Leafers actually registers even higher on the managerial Richter scale. Raymond Galligan has now also assumed the Cavan hot seat.

Last year’s defeated finalists Armagh have stuck with Kieran McGeeney while Vinny Corey’s Monaghan, 2023 All-Ireland semi-finalists, will also have real designs on provincial glory. 

McGee says there are parallels to be drawn from when McGuinness first took the Donegal reins back in 2011 and the current lie of the land ahead of 2024.

Donegal are once again coming from a low ebb and Mickey Harte is still in charge of the Ulster champions. 

Writing in his Irish Times column back in May, McGuinness once again emphasised just how much real estate the three-time All-Ireland winner occupied in his head back then. 

“As a young manager starting out, Harte was the barometer for me. In those first few years in charge of the Donegal seniors, there wasn’t a day I didn’t think of him or Tyrone. 

“I knew in my heart that if we could beat Tyrone we had a great chance of winning Ulster, because they were the kings of the province at the time.

“Harte was a pioneer and he moved the needle in terms of how we think about football. 

“Tactically, he was a trailblazer, implementing everything from scoring full backs where tacklers like Joe McMahon played further up the field, to tactical substitutions – the Peter Canavan switch has become part of GAA folklore.

“He developed a collective approach to defending, harnessed the power of the group and was fearless in taking the big guns on and, crucially, beating them. Above all, he was a thinker. And as an opposing manager, he made you think”.

McGee remembers those early team meetings where McGuinness’ obsession with knocking the Red Hands and Harte off their perch was almost instantly relayed to the group. 

“It’s added real interest very early,” McGee said on the spate of high-profile appointments made in recent weeks.

“I still believe the provincial system is dead in the water. But Ulster, because it’s so competitive, and because we now have all these delicious subplots, Ulster is delaying that sentiment”. 

The more things change…

By the time the 2024 Ulster SFC gets underway it’ll be eleven long seasons since McGuinness last crossed paths with Harte in the Ulster SFC.

On a drizzly May afternoon in Ballybofey, the then reigning All-Ireland champions sent Harte and Tyrone packing for the third successive season. 

Granted, Donegal’s defence of Sam and the Anglo Celt would eventually capitulate in a provincial final defeat to Monaghan and an All-Ireland quarter-final pummeling at the hands of Mayo. 

But for McGuinness, who would end his first Donegal tenure the following year with another Ulster crown and as defeated All-lreland finalists; it meant he held a clean sweep record over Harte. 

There is no doubt that will still grate at Derry’s new boss. If McGuinness came into the role as Donegal senior boss obsessing about Harte, those roles were well and truly reversed by the time he stepped away. 

Sean Cavanagh has explained in the past just how preoccupied Harte eventually became with solving the Donegal puzzle. 

And while they did finally get over the line once more in that duel in the 2016 Ulster final, McGuinness was long gone. 

“Mickey would have tried to come up with different ways of beating it, their system,” recalled Cavanagh.

“I remember one night in particular in Garvaghey where we literally sat down and said, ‘This is the way Donegal are doing it. And we are not going to beat this unless we adapt it in our own way’.

“I know that was the acceptance from us, that this was the way we were going to have to play because this is how they had beaten us.That was a massive credit to what McGuinness had done in Donegal.

You can imagine Mickey doesn’t accept failure too easily. I remember in Garvaghey working on it.

‘When they have the ball, you are in this zone, he is in that zone. You are no longer marking a man. You are marking space. You are now a zonal team rather than a man-to-man team’.

“That was us three or four years after losing big championship games to Donegal.

“It was also us saying, ‘Right, we can’t beat this unless we join it,’ and we did eventually get over the line a couple of times against them. But that probably coincided with McGuinness’ departure at that point.”

There are no guarantees in the absolute minefield that is the Ulster SFC, that we’ll get the modern installment of that old but box office rivalry.

McGee’s senior intercounty career spanned across three very important intersections, ‘before Jim’, ‘during Jim’ and ‘after Jim’. 

And he says that in the end, those Donegal and Tyrone encounters had gone beyond nasty. 

“Back then, right away, Jim set Tyrone up as the template to get to where he wanted to go. There was real bad blood there. It just got really toxic. By 2016, that game in Ballybofey was worse than nasty. That’s the only way to describe it. 

“But you see that with so many of the Ulster sides. And people will ask what is the exact history between x,y or z. But often it’s just two well-matched teams looking to climb over the top of the other. 

“And when you have those ingredients, especially in Ulster, it can just take on a life of its own. It was Tyrone and Armagh in the noughties, we then muscled in on the scene and it was us and Tyrone. 

“Derry and Armagh were going toe to toe last year as well. That’s just the nature of Ulster football”.

There has always been a lingering hope that McGuinness might one day return to the Tír Chonaill hotseat. But McGee says Harte’s Derry hook-up this week is just something no one saw coming. 

“Mickey Harte going to Derry was an even bigger shock - it’s just such a curve ball. I can’t wait until a journalist actually gets sitting down with him to find out the exact motivation and the reasons behind it. 

“Is he sore about his departure from Tyrone, is he out to prove ‘here, listen, I can still do this’. There are only a handful of teams that have a realistic chance of winning an All-Ireland and Harte is once again in charge of one of them. 

“There are some big and obvious questions that will be asked so with it, and Jim last month, we just have all this Ulster SFC talk at a time when it’s usually so quiet”.

McGuinness has, so far, managed to avoid any real lengthy discussion on his own reasons for stepping back into the spotlight with Donegal. But McGee says Donegal and Derry are on a provincial collision course ahead of 2024. 

“Derry have the bullseye on their backs right now, just like Tyrone did back in 2011.  What will be so interesting is will Harte or, more to the point Gavin Devlin, go the same route and build upon what Rory Gallagher and Ciaran Meenagh have already put in place there. 

“Or will they come in and tear up that script completely? I haven’t seen enough of Ardboe and Slaughtneil to have a definitive opinion on that. Like, will they go defensive or will the approach be more expansive?

“That will be a big decision because Derry became fairly innovative in pushing their tactical approach.  Coaches, sometimes ego can get in the way. 

“But there is a serious amount of groundwork already done in Derry so I can’t wait to see if there is continuity there or do they start from scratch with their own direction”. 

McGee’s brother Neil will, or course, form part of McGuinness’ backroom team next term alongside another 2012 legend, Colm McFadden. 

Eamon McGee was late to the party back in 2011 and had initially been dropped from McGuinness’ provisional squad for an early breach of discipline.

He’d eventually come back in from the cold later that same season but with a very clear understanding of what was now an ironclad code of conduct. 

In between, during his spell outside the bubble, he’d often press Neil on what exactly was going on at training, what was the mood like. But his younger sibling rarely broke breath in those one-sided exchanges. 

This time out, Eamon won’t even attempt to poke that bear. 

“A lot has changed in those ten or so years! My mistake back then was asking him and thinking he’d tell me. This time out, I won’t even bug him. It’ll be the ‘shut up shop’ approach from Neil pretty soon I’d say!

“But fair play to him - he’s given so much to Donegal already and now he’s going to give even more”.