IN the rich tapestry of Dungloe’s past, names like O’Donnell and Sweeney jump off the page.
The town’s castle belonged to Sweeneys before the Gaelic Order in Ulster collapsed in the early 17th century.
The Templecrone parish part of the Rosses was ruled by the Sweeneys until the plantation in 1609, when they lost all their land.
To this day, both names not only persist but thrive.
On Sunday, the town’s footballing story will resume after half-a-century on pause.
Conor O’Donnell is the current captain.
Their manager is Dessie Gallagher, whose mother was Sweeney and whose wife is a different Sweeney.
For almost two centuries his mother’s people owned the hotel in town until it was sold on 15 years ago.
It had long been the hub of all things GAA.
Dessie Gallagher was named after his grandfather Dessie Sweeney, who along his brother Kevin was on the first Donegal team ever to play in Croke Park.
They beat Cork in an All-Ireland junior semi-final on September 3, 1933 before losing the final to Mayo a few weeks later.
That team included O’Donnell brothers Bernie and the famous John ‘Hughie’, who had won two Sigerson Cups with UCD and later captained the county to two Lagan Cups as well as winning six Donegal championships with Dungloe.
The names pass right through from then until now.
There are so many O’Donnells down the years that distinguishing one family from the other isn’t always easy.
When Dungloe lost the county final 60 years ago, Ben, Sean and Eddie were three O’Donnell brothers, but full-back Neal Gerard was a different O’Donnell altogether – married to an aunt of Dessie Gallagher, to bring it back again.
It’s often referenced that Dungloe’s last final was that 1964 decider but under the name Rosses Rovers, which they only wore briefly in trying to settle differences that eventually resulted in the club splitting three ways, they were beaten by the St Joseph’s amalgamation in 1970.
The connection from the early teams to the current team is strong.
Dessie Gallagher’s two sons, Darragh and Odhran, are first cousins of Dylan Sweeney and Oisin Bonner.
Their grandfather Fred Sweeney, who was Dessie Gallagher’s father-in-law, was still a minor on the last teams in the club to win championships when they won it back-to-back in 1957 and ‘58.
He gave so much of his life to the club before he passed away in February.
Full-forward Conor Greene is a grandson of 1960s goalkeeper Packie ‘Ferry’ Boyle.
Ryan Connors’ uncle John played for Donegal in the early 1990s and his great-grandfather Paddy McPaul made the club’s team of the century.
And that brings us to Conor O’Donnell.
“I’m not related to any of them,” he laughs.
Although his people are Dungloe people, none of them played football.
Neither his parents or grandparents on either side were connected to the club.
His love was fostered by his aunt Sarah Boyle, who started taking him and his sisters to Donegal games when they were kids.
He watered it to bloom himself.
Now 24, he is 60 minutes from leading them up the steps in MacCumhaill Park. It’s officially the club’s first final since ‘64 but in reality, the Rosses Rovers’ loss in 1970 was as good as.
It is all basically irrelevant to the class of 2024.
Just four years ago, they found themselves relegated to intermediate football, beaten in a playoff side by a Milford team that hadn’t won a game in over a year.
“Jason McBride who plays corner-back for us, he said that day, do we want to be remembered as the team that got relegated or do we want to be remembered as a team that actually left something behind them?” recalls O’Donnell.
“That hit home, a lot of us would have been thinking the same and we didn’t want to be remembered as the team that got us relegated.
“We’d been a senior club for so long before that year that it really drove us on.”
The drop down did them the power of good. They lost an intermediate final and then won one.
That success created a snowball that has propelled them to the point of fielding two teams at most underage grades.
Tony Boyle just managed the club’s ladies’ team to an intermediate championship with Raymond Sweeney as his coach. Those two names stick out from their recent past along with Raymond’s brother Adrian, but despite having been in senior the entire time between 1987 and 2020, they were never able to get over the line.
Dungloe go in as huge underdogs against St Eunan’s on Sunday.
This is game eight of their campaign. The only one they’ve lost was a one-point group stage defeat away to St Michael’s that they reversed in the semi-final.
“If you’d asked the team 60 years ago if they thought it would be now before a Dungloe team would be in a final again, they’d think you were mad,” says O’Donnell.
“We can’t start thinking like that. You have to hope it’s the start of something, the bit of a run we’re on now, hopefully it keeps going that it could inspire or motivate younger fellas in the club to kick on and come up through into the senior team, they could come and put us out of the team and make success of their own.
“That’s something we try to achieve, to bring the young ones on with us if we can. We’re not all gonna be young forever.
“There’s a lot of work has been put in, it took us a while.
“You don’t build that stuff overnight. You just have to put the hard yards in.”
Until the late 1700s, Dungloe consisted of just five wooden houses. The only way into the town before the bridge was built was to walk on the huge grey stones that had fallen into the river. That gave the town its Irish name - An Clochán Liath – ‘grey stones’.
It’s now believed to be among the most densely-populated rural areas in Europe.
The history of a place like Dungloe could never be written fully enough to do it all justice.
But a new chapter of its story, its footballing story, would be nice.