O’Neills Derry SFC semi-final: Glen v Slaughtneil (Sunday, 4pm, Owenbeg)
A FORTNIGHT on Thursday will mark 20 years since the sons of the men of ‘69 took Slaughtneil where they thought they might never go.
Having reached just one senior football final in their history, Jim Kelly’s early goal took them to victory over Bellaghy in their second.
That after 51 years of the club’s existence, they won their first senior title in Glen was all the sweeter.
Slaughtneil had formed out of Glen’s shadow in 1953, beginning a local rivalry that’s forced its way to the head of Derry football.
When they made the breakthrough in football, Slaughtneil took off.
Six Derry football championships. Three Ulsters, reaching two All-Ireland finals.
Eleven county hurling titles and four Ulster, the first and only club from Derry to have won it.
In camogie, they’re going for ten-in-a-row in Derry, having won six provincial titles on the bounce and three consecutive All-Irelands, losing in the final to make it four.
It has been a 20-year spell that has taken them to places they never thought they’d be.
But the one trophy they didn’t get their hands on was the Andy Merrigan Cup.
To have spent the winter knowing it was sleeping over three miles out the road in the bed of the neighbours that they almost scalped in the semi-final last year will have pierced their skin.
So this is no longer a local rivalry.
There is no game anywhere in Ireland this weekend that can match Glen-Slaughtneil for significance or for plotlines.
For one, Mark Doran remains favourite to fill the Derry managerial post that has been vacant for just shy of 14 weeks.
This will be seen by the neutral observers that will flock to Owenbeg as his audition for the gig. It is the fixture on which his credentials will be judged.
The fire and in-your-face energy Slaughtneil brought to last year’s semi-final made people sit up and notice the job he was doing.
The interest was such that RTÉ had enquired as far back as August about screening a potential showdown this weekend. When the draw fell that way, the national broadcaster was given Magherafelt-Newbridge instead. This game was just seen as too financially valuable to hand over.
Fans have been waiting months for this game. It was inevitable that they would meet somewhere along the line.
Since Glen won their first title with a devastating dismissal of their rivals in the 2021 final, there had been signs of slippage from Slaughtneil, that the gap was beginning to grow.
What Doran has done is completely freshened the team up with a host of youngsters.
Ruairi Ó Mainain has moved into attack. Eamon Cassidy, Fionn McEldowney, Cahal McKaigue and Shea Cassidy have all forced established players out of the team, a sign that they wanted and needed new energy and legs.
Jerome McGuigan, who kicked four points from play in the quarter-final win over Ballinascreen, has been a different animal this year.
There’s a vitality about them that the neutral public hopes is ready to bring a different type of war to Glen than last year.
Glen have heard all this noise and seen this all coming. There will be no ambush.
There’s a constant expectation of unattainable perfection that sits over Malachy O’Rourke’s side. Throughout their entire run to the Ulster final last year, it was said that they weren’t playing well. That outside of the second half of the Derry final, the Ulster final and the win over Kilmacud, they didn’t fire.
They won the All-Ireland.
Imagine being at the level where you can win an All-Ireland not firing. The significance of Slaughtneil’s 1-11 to 0-11 group stage win a few weeks back is limited by Glen’s general approach to the group stages of the last two years, and the level of absence in their team that day.
They started that afternoon without seven of the 15 that began the All-Ireland club final win over St Brigid’s, big names like Conor Glass, Ethan Doherty, Ryan Dougan, Emmett Bradley among them. Add in Jack Doherty, who hasn’t played since the bad ankle injury he suffered against Kilmacud, there’s a lot missing.
Slaughtneil will feel there are vulnerabilities there to be exploited. Danny Tallon, Cathal Mulholland and Ryan Dougan were travelling for most of the year. Ciaran McFaul looks set to miss out with injury, Jack Doherty isn’t fit, Alex Doherty has fallen back down the pecking order.
The group stage game was Glen’s first championship defeat in Derry, knockout or otherwise, since the 2020 quarter-final between these two.
Slaughtneil will know well how quickly a sense of invincibility can be removed.
They were going for five-in-a-row in 2019, looking like they wouldn’t be touched for years by anyone, when Coleraine beat them in a semi-final replay.
They’ve had hands on the John McLaughlin Cup just once since.
This is a game the people of Derry, not just Glen and Slaughtneil, have been waiting for months to see.
If you’re not there, you’ve only yourself to blame.