Talking points: Rory Gallagher facing old friends, Monaghan's poor record
WATCHING ON: Derry Manager Rory Gallagher. Pic: INPHO/Ben Brady
As Clones was a happy blur of red and white chaos and delight at the end of last year’s Ulster final, a mobile TV camera tracked Rory Gallagher’s movements moments after the final whistle. Gallagher just cooly and calmly walked over to commiserate with a couple of Donegal players before casually walking back to the sideline before the camera angle flashed elsewhere.
Gallagher has always been highly charged and animated on the line and, while the camera didn’t capture his initial reaction at the final whistle, Gallagher’s muted demeanour shortly afterwards was understandable considering how he had coached and managed a lot of the Donegal players Derry had just defeated.
Gallagher was being respectful in that moment but he certainly wouldn’t have felt any discomfort in it because he has been so used to going up against former players for so much of his career. Four years earlier, Gallagher was in the same position as Fermanagh manager when they were beaten by a Donegal side which included the majority of the players Gallagher had managed to the 2015 and 2016 Ulster finals.
Gallagher’s relationship with some of those Donegal players from last year’s Ulster final would have extended as far back as the outset of the last decade when he was Jim McGuinness’s coach when Donegal won successive Ulster titles in 2011 and 2012, and the 2012 All-Ireland.
In modern Ulster football, nobody is more intrinsically connected to its culture than Gallagher, both in terms of shaping style and attitude, and through such deep involvement in the game. In the last 12 Ulster championships, Gallagher has either coached or managed in 11 of them, with three different counties. The one year he wasn’t involved (2013), Gallagher was helping out with the Donegal U21s.
One of the best football brains and coaches in the business, Gallagher’s consistent involvement is driven by his insatiable desire to repeatedly test himself and succeed at the elite level. Doing it with different counties has never been an issue or a barrier because Gallagher has always had such an open minded and nomadic existence.
During one eight-year period in the 2000s, Gallagher played with three different clubs in three different counties. The breadth and oscillation of Gallagher’s travels often led to accusations of disloyalty and selective glory-hunting but he always countered those claims by stating that he always played where work took him.
Speculation continually accompanied Gallagher’s future but the sideshows around his nomadic existence often concealed just how good he was a player early in his career. In 2002, he recorded 3-9 in an Ulster championship game against Monaghan. Gallagher was top scorer in the Ulster championship for three successive years and was nominated for an All-Star in two of those seasons. He was only 24 and nearing his peak. And then he walked away from Fermanagh.
It appeared to be for greener pastures. He joined St Brigid’s in Dublin, where he took up a coaching development position, but Gallagher was one of the best free-takers in the country and he seemed to offer the perfect antidote to a problem which had consistently hampered Dublin at that time. Gallagher may have been speculating a move but then Dublin manager Tommy Lyons immediately knocked it on the head.
Gallagher was one of the most talented footballers Fermanagh ever produced but his decision to walk away in 2003 effectively marked the beginning of the end of his inter-county career. When Charlie Mulgrew took over in 2004, he never recalled Gallagher and that decision was never questioned after Fermanagh reached their first All-Ireland semi-final.
Rory, and his first cousin Raymond Gallagher, had long been the exciting face of Fermanagh football, bringing class and a healthy arrogance in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but the county had created a new identity in 2004 and appeared to have moved on without them.
Both were recalled in 2005 and Rory impressed in that year’s league campaign. He was by far their best forward in the Division 2 league semi-final against Meath when hitting six points. It was Fermanagh’s last competitive game before the championship but Gallagher never started a game for the county again.
Mulgrew never called him back after 2005 and Gallagher was so desperate to play inter-county football again that he transferred to Crosserlough in Cavan in 2007, where he was then living. He played the league with Cavan but broke a bone in his hand a week before the championship and his summer was limited to a late substitute appearance in the qualifier defeat to Mayo. A week later, he had returned to Dublin.
After Malachy O’Rourke took over Fermanagh at the end of that season, there was speculation that Gallagher might be asked back but he never was. If he was on board in 2008, he may have been the difference between them winning a first Ulster title because their freetaking ultimately cost them.
The way his inter-county career ended concealed the immense service he gave to Fermanagh in his early years. Gallagher was only 14 when he made his debut as a minor and was barely 17 when he first played for the seniors in 1995. Even the way he finished his playing career was unique; Gallagher was the first player to win provincial medals with different clubs (apart from colleges’ teams) in different provinces. One of his last acts as a player was to win an All-Ireland club medal with St Gall’s in Belfast in 2010.
A year later he was an inter-county coach and he’s never looked back since. Gallagher’s latest stop with Derry is against Fermanagh in Saturday’s Ulster quarter-final, where Gallagher will go up against his own county, including a host of players he managed between 2018-’19.
It won’t faze Gallagher. It’s just another day at his office.
When Tyrone won their first Ulster senior title in 1956, their ten-point win was seismic, especially after defeating Cavan in the final considering their powerhouse status in the province at that time; it was Cavan’s 18th successive appearance in an Ulster final, with Cavan having won 13 of those deciders.
Tyrone meanwhile had only previously appeared in three finals, but there was a sense that 1956 could finally be a breakthrough season, especially after Tyrone had defeated Monaghan in the first round by eight points.
That was Tyrone’s first time beating Monaghan in the championship and yet, while Tyrone finally began to beat Monaghan in the championship over the following decades, they were still only a tiny handful of victories. When the sides met in an Ulster final for the first time in 1988, Tyrone went into the match as raging hot favourites and Monaghan still turned them over. It was even more galling for Tyrone when they felt they were denied a stonewall penalty in a two point defeat.
In any case, Monaghan didn’t beat Tyrone again for another 26 years, when they edged past them in the 2014 Ulster semi-final. Monaghan did win Ulster titles in 2013 and 2015 but in both of those seasons, Tyrone knocked them out in the All-Ireland quarter-final.
Tyrone have made a habit of making it count in knockout football against Monaghan. After Monaghan had beaten Tyrone in the 2018 Ulster quarter-final, Tyrone returned to scalp their neighbours in the All-Ireland semi-final later that August. When they met in Croke Park again in the 2021 Ulster final, Tyrone were victorious once more.
Monaghan-Tyrone will never have the same historical acrimonious undercurrent that defines some of Ulster’s more bitter and fractious relationships but the rivalry has certainly been sharpened over the last two decades, especially since Monaghan emerged as a legitimate threat to Tyrone in the middle of the 2000s. Prior to Tyrone’s first All-Ireland win in 2002, Tyrone had only beaten Monaghan on five occasions across 16 championship meetings. Tyrone have completely turned that stat on its head in the last two decades, especially in more recent years as Monaghan have only won five of the sides last 17 league and championship meetings.
So can Monaghan turn the history tables around again now on Sunday?
In the lead up to last weekend’s Carlow-Kildare Joe McDonagh match, the bookmakers clearly forgot one critical fact around the odds. Kildare were fancied after running Offaly so close in the Division 2 league final but, aside from the disappointment of losing that match and the threat of being flat six days later, Tom Mullaly’s insight into so many of the Kildare players as Naas manager was bound to be a huge advantage to Carlow. It was.
Mullaly has been down this road before. In January 2022, he masterminded Naas to the Leinster Intermediate club title, defeating Wexford’s Oylegate-Glenbrien in Newbridge, before driving south on the M9 immediately afterwards to manage Carlow defeat Kildare in the Kehoe Cup. That task wasn’t nearly as tricky as having to manage Naas beat his native Glenmore in the Leinster semi-final a few weeks earlier.
Now in his third year as Carlow manager, Mullaly gave a very honest interview to KCLR’s Brendan Hennessy after they lost to Kerry in Round 2 of the league in February. Mullaly said that of his three years involved with Carlow “this is the year we find a bit more honesty in what we’re dealing with” regarding team selection.
“The key criteria for 2023 is that people want to play for Carlow and are willing to abide by the standards that are required to play for Carlow,” he said. A number of players that were missing earlier in the year are now back and Carlow look in a good place again after a disappointing league.
Last weekend’s 19-point win against Kildare was an impressive start, but Carlow were targeting that game for months. Kerry on Sunday in Tralee though, will provide a far more accurate barometer as to where Carlow are really at.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
