Passionate Downey hoping Derry can return to the big time
It will be a short journey if the driver is in the mood to recount some of his experiences. The relationship between the counties was always heated but the thermometer hit new heights in the 1990s during Downey’s best years.
The 1991 meeting in Omagh, his first, bridged a gap of five years. Tyrone possessed a rump of the 1986 All-Ireland final team and some of the U21s who had put 4-16 past Kerry in the All-Ireland final shortly before but a callow Derry side edged a one-point win in what was a dour encounter.
Derry manager Damian Cassidy scored the late, winning goal and if Tyrone thought things couldn’t get worse they were much mistaken. Derry beat them twice inside a week a year later, first in the league final and then in Ulster.
“That National League final was a springboard to our All-Ireland success in ‘93,” recalls Downey. “That was the first real battle that we had with Tyrone and then we beat them the following week in the first round of the championship.
“We had the upper hand at that stage but then in the mid-90s that Tyrone team was getting stronger and we weren’t as strong as we had been in the early part of the decade.
“That was mainly because Eamon Coleman was taken from us by the county board. That rankled very heavily with the players back then.”
The anger remains in Downey’s voice, even now, 15 years on from Coleman’s eviction. The county board said at the time that history would be the judge of their decision and so it has proven. The move looks even worse in hindsight.
“There are only six, seven or eight counties that are capable of winning an All-Ireland,’’ Downey says.
“Ability-wise there probably isn’t a whole lot between any of them. It is about who is the best organised and who has everyone pulling in the one direction.
“We were certainly doing that in the early ‘90s, but it went downhill pretty quickly after that and that is not to cast any aspersions on any of the managers who came in after Eamonn. They did their best. It was just that the closeness of that team had fragmented at that stage.”
Derry continued to pack a punch in the league. They won three NFL titles in the ‘90s, but couldn’t continue that form into the summer. All the more galling was the fact that it was Tyrone who slipped into their role.
The tide turned in 1995, in what became known as the Battle of Clones, when Derry were beaten by a point by a Tyrone team had been reduced to 13 players and trailed by three points at one stage.
“We won the league final that year which was probably just down to the players we had as much as anything,” says Downey.
“Things came unstuck for us in the championship because we just weren’t as united or connected as we might have been.”
Tyrone came up trumps again in ‘96 but bragging rights have crisscrossed the border between the two with a dizzying regularity since. They even did so twice one summer when Tyrone’s success in Ulster was avenged in an All-Ireland quarter-final.
The last time they met was back in 2006 when the rivalry’s penchant for the unexpected coughed up a six-point win for Derry against the reigning All-Ireland champions. And in Tyrone’s back garden.
The chances of a repeat tomorrow have been undermined by a litany of injuries and suspensions which have deprived Cassidy of one-third of his starting team, including, Fergal Doherty, the side’s heartbeat at midfield.
If only that were all. Derry go into the game on the back of an untimely controversy over the incident in a recent club game when James Kielt was left with a broken jaw and saw James Conway dropped from the county panel.
“Derry-Tyrone matches, regardless of the personnel, are always close,” says Downey. “It is the same as Dublin-Meath really. Dublin were far superior a few weeks ago in Croke Park but Meath ran them very close.
“The Derry-Tyrone rivalry was fierce in my time because both counties were chasing the Holy Grail. Tyrone now are a different kettle of fish. They have moved on, unlike Derry, but hopefully we will see that change this weekend.
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