Ulster SFC semi-final: Donegal v Tyrone (Sunday, 2pm, Celtic Park, live on BBC2 NI)
DONEGAL had one hundred and eighty-two days to prepare for Derry.
They’ll have had seven full days for Tyrone.
Are Tyrone the same challenge that Derry are at this moment in time? No, they’re not.
But if we’re gazing in the rear-view mirror at the summers of 2011 to 2014, you do see a bit of a pattern of where Donegal’s blind spots have been.
It was sometimes on either side of the really big games that Donegal would have come closest to slipping up in those years.
Take the All-Ireland quarter-final with Armagh in 2014, where they got out by the skin of their teeth before beating Dublin three weeks later.
They had taken Armagh completely for granted, put all their chips on a shot at the Dubs and nearly didn’t even get the game.
The previous summer, they’d known for six months that it was Tyrone again in their first game.
They got over that hurdle in Ballybofey but a month later, a Down side they’d beaten by 11 points in the previous summer’s Ulster final battened the hatches and unexpectedly took a semi-final the distance.
Monaghan finished the job against an admittedly tired looking Donegal that year.
It is hard for any team to invest themselves in a game for six whole months and then bring the same to a different challenge a week later.
Mentally, tactically, emotionally, there is just no way that Donegal can bring the same focus to Celtic Park this weekend that they did last weekend.
But on Tyrone’s current form, they won’t need to. All they’ll need to do is enough.
“Anyone who watched Donegal knows if we perform like that again, we may as well not bother showing up,” said the eternally straight-talking Mattie Donnelly after his side’s dramatic extra-time survival against Cavan.
You can look at it from the point of view that they scored 1-23 but they also conceded 3-16 and allowed a team not exactly brimming with confidence to come from eight points down and take them to the wire.
If you’re looking for a contrast, you need look no further than the black card spells in both games.
Derry scored three points when Niall O’Donnell was off but found themselves frustrated by prolonged Donegal possession, a bit of time-killing from Shaun Patton. They were, in the heat of it, pretty composed.
Tyrone were not. Even as experienced as Mattie Donnelly is, and as good as he was over 90 minutes, his straight-line ball to Darragh Canavan that was turned over for an Oisin Brady point that raised the decibel levels summed it up a bit.
But it also showed the inexperience in their team and a lot of why they conceded 3-16, and why they will struggle to beat Donegal.
For both of Cavan’s goals in the black card spell, Tyrone had enough bodies in the right areas to cope.
On the first one, Conall Devlin was ball-watching and got drawn towards it when he just had to stay goal side. Instead he stepped out and let Niall Carolan in behind to set the goal up when all he had.
The second goal was a calamity.
First, when there wasn’t much on in attack, they did the complete opposite from what Donegal did against Derry.
Ruairi Canavan put his head down and tried to force a gap that wasn’t there.
Then Ben Cullen tried to pop a ball over Brian O’Connell’s head.
They had no inclination to recycle or kill a bit of time, and it cost them.
When Cavan turned it over and Gerard Smith was forced to turn back 30 yards from the Tyrone goal on the left wing, Brian Dooher’s men had six against three on that side.
But on the other wing, Jason McLoughlin had gone 80 yards completely unmarked and created a two-against-one with Paddy Lynch in an acre of space. Cormac O’Reilly eventually spotted Lynch, who came out as McLoughlin went in past him.
Instead of staying with the man closest to goal, Seanie O’Donnell chased out towards Lynch and left a simple pass in behind for McLoughlin.
He squared, Niall Morgan’s punch landed to Niall Carolan and the game was almost flipped on its head by the goal.
Morgan didn’t do much wrong on the punch or the shot but he’d have to shoulder some of the blame for the lack of communication that led to such a surplus of defenders on one wing while nobody spotted McLoughlin coming 80 yards up the other side with nobody covering.
A lot of it is inexperience and that was something Donegal’s very deep and narrow setup last weekend protected them from.
They had Ciaran Moore and Mark Curran fairly new to that calibre of game but they knew their roles and had safety in numbers.
Tyrone will ask different questions of Donegal, because they’re there to be asked.
A week is not long to come up with something radically different. So you have to expect that Donegal will come with largely the same approach, particularly given how aware they’ll be that if they cut off Darragh Canavan, there’s a fair chance they win this game whatever way it pans out.
But how are they with the ball in hand against a team that is dropping off and not giving them opportunities to hit them on the break, or with kickouts over the top?
Shaun Patton described the injury that forced him off last weekend as “a nip” and suggested he’d be grand. If he is, surely Tyrone start by dropping off the kick and blunting that Donegal weapon.
They’ll keep Mattie Donnelly as a permanent sweeper to guard against the goals. Donegal will have to find a different way to win.
In that sense, it will be a really good follow-up examination of them as an attacking force.
You look at how it all matches up and it feels as though it’s tailor-made for a Patrick McBrearty start.
While Tyrone have individuals that can test them, they just haven’t been at that level as a collective.
Their attacking play the last day remained one-dimensional towards Canavan and McCurry, still relying on their brilliance to drag them through.
Conn Kilpatrick is named among the subs – there’s a fair chance he’ll start in place of Aodhan Donaghy or Joe Oguz - but there’s still no sign of Peter Harte, Conor Meyler or Frank Burns, who were all kicking about gently during the warm-up last week.
Donegal have struggled to sparkle on follow-up nights like this in McGuinness’s past.
Tyrone will make them work for it, make them think about it, make them find answers to alternative problems.
It’s just hard to see exactly how Tyrone beat them.