Kevin Cassidy's straight talk turned Gaoth Dobhair round

Kevin Cassidy’s straight-talking has been credited as one of the catalysts for a remarkable turnaround in fortunes for Gaoth Dobhair who will pursue a maiden Ulster club football title on Sunday after years of underachievement.

The Donegal outfit face Monaghan’s Scotstown in the provincial decider, just two years on from Cassidy’s decision to hang up his boots and his declaration that the senior team had continually failed to live up to its potential.

County champions in 2006, they had never come close to replicating that success in the following 10 years, but there were winds of change in the form of a superbly successful underage side hitting maturity and the appointment for 2017 of new boss Mervyn O’Donnell. Cassidy’s no-nonsense delivery helped, too.

The former All Star laid it bare, bemoaning the fact that players had failed to put in the requisite effort down the years and, worse, ‘failed the parish’. It can’t have been the easiest thing to hear but clubmate Daire Ó Baoill is adamant that such harsh words were needed.

“Kevin will maybe say how it is and we maybe needed someone to go about it and tell us straight up instead of always avoiding what was wrong. Kevin hung up the boots, people started.... That’s when it all started going.”

Ó Baoill, a former Airtricity League player with Finn Harps, joined the club’s senior panel in 2016 and was devastated that a man he idolised was calling time.

But Cassidy returned last year and his input is even greater in 2018 as he has migrated from the bench back to the starting 15.

Now stationed at full-forward, Cassidy is in good company in a side which boasts the McGees, Neil and Eamon, and Odhran MacNiallais. Not to mention Ó Baoill, another county man, whose three goals were so instrumental in seeing off Crossmaglen in the semi-final.

It’s some change of fortunes for a club which Ó Baoill admits was something of a “laughing stock” for so long and, if that Cross scalp could conceivably be construed as a weight on their pelts now, he looks at it differently.

“Finally winning the county this year lifted the pressure off and we kind of saw where we could be at and how far we could go. We’re going game-by-game now and into new territory and we’re all enjoying it now at and enjoying our football at the minute.”

It’s 1975 since St Joseph’s claimed Donegal’s one and only Ulster club SFC title and the county has been represented only three times in the decider since. Win on Sunday and the underachievers will surely silence all the critics.