Minor final: Sean MacCumhaill’s and Glenswilly a novel final pairing

Sean MacCumhaill’s and Glenswilly clash in this season's Donegal Minor Football Championship final on Bank Holiday Monday at O’Donnell Park is most definitely a novel pairing.

For Glenswilly, it is a first ever minor A final appearance in the club's 39-year history.

And you have to go back 50 years, long before Glenswilly was even founded, to find the last time Sean MacCumhaill’s were minor champions. Amazingly the Finnsiders have only made it all to two finals in the interceding five decades.

“I found it hard to believe when I heard it first that 1971 was the last time we won the minor,” said current MacCumhaills minor manager Kevin ‘Keegan’ McCormack. “It is far too long a time for a club like Macumhaills.”

After a 13- game unbeaten run, including a 4-9 to 1-8 win over Monday’s opposition, the team from the Twin Towns of 2021 are the firm favourites to end the long famine.

That worries the MacCumhaills boss and he points to a number of big favourites that bit the dust so far this season.

“All you have to do is look at Dublin and Kerry, in the All-Ireland championship this season,” McCormack said. “They were both big favorites and as we all now know how Mayo and Tyrone fairly bust those dockets.

“People will see us as favourites and we accept that but we also know when the players cross the white line on Monday, being favourites will not count.

“I know we beat them well in the group stages and that was the very first game of the season. They were short Gary Kelly - one of their county minors - that evening and they have fairly turned their season around since that game. They take a five-game unbeaten run into the final and they have beaten a number of big teams along the way.

“A couple of weeks ago they went to Glenties and beat a strong Naomh Conaill side in the quarter-final and they did it without Gary Kelly.

“For me that was a big statement because not many teams come away from Glenties in any bracket with a win. After that game I knew they would be in the final.”

Gerard McGrenra is manager Martin Glackin’s number two at Glenswilly.

“We lost the first four games and then we beat Aodh Ruadh, by a point, at home,” McGrenra said. “That evening eight players, four from each team, were sent off in the closing minutes.

“I believe the win over Ballyshannon was the turning point even though we lost the next game heavily to Four Masters. We were missing the four boys that were sent off against Ballyshannon but since the Four Masters game we haven’t lost.”

Glenswilly beat Glenfin in the semi-final to set up a final showdown with MacCumhaill’s.

Team captain Oisin Ward is nursing an injury and is in a race against the clock to be fit in time for the final.

“We are up against it in the final,” McGrenra added. “They have looked like the team from very early in the competition and they have lived up to their billing.

“They are very strong and have four county minors - Sean Martin, Conor McGinty, Kevin McCormack and Sean Martin.”

Sean MacCumhaills defeated Ardara in the 1971 final and their only other success was in 1957, against the same opponents.

Glenswilly won three minor C championships in a row at the start of the millennium. Those wins were against Convoy, in 2000, Letterkenny Gaels, in 2001 and Milford in 2002.