Christy Toye (Donegal)
IT might seem strange to go with someone from your own team or your own county but, when I really thought about it, the top one had to be Christy. Over the guts of a decade, he was the toughest fella I came up against.
There’s guys you might mark four times, max, if you come across teams a lot but the reason I’ve gone for Christy is because I had to mark him three times a week, and then even at club we’d both have been playing midfield so we’d have clashed there too.
He just had everything - strong, powerful, athletic. He would go for the jugular every single time, there was no such thing as laying it off. If he got the ball, he would be going for you, no matter what. As a wing-back, that’s a nightmare; to know he’s going to stand you up every time.
We would’ve come on the team together around 2001/2002, and football was a lot different then – it was very much man v man. Wing-forwards didn’t drop back, it was you against him all the time. He’d be number 10, I was number seven, every manager would match us up and we used to tear lumps out of each other every day at training.
We actually lived together for two years in those early days too when both of us were at Sligo IT. Christy’s a seriously laid back fella but really good craic, really good fun to be about and we always got on extremely well. Nothing fazed him, he just got on with it. He was big into his music and he’d have played the guitar for us in the house the odd time.
On the football field, though, he was just a winner so you’d see us travelling to training together, marking each other for an hour and a half and then you’d be going back to the house and half the time you weren’t even speaking.
There were nights we’d have hopped off each other and maybe had to be pulled apart; you’re talking about two guys who wanted to win. Even though we were the best of mates, it didn’t matter for that hour and a half.
But there is absolutely no doubt he made me a far better player because, no matter who I faced on a Sunday, I knew he wasn’t going to be as good as Christy Toye. Training was nearly harder than the actual games because every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday you were getting paired against him, and you knew if you weren’t at your absolute best you were going to get a roasting.
A lot of people forget the injuries Christy had too. He was flying with Donegal in 2009 when he ruptured his Achilles tendon [in a qualifier against Clare] and that kept him out for a year. Then he was out for another year a few years later [Toye missed the 2013 campaign due to trigeminal neuralgia – a chronic pain condition that affects the trigeminal nerve in the face].
He had a brilliant career, but there was some awful bad luck in there too. Had Christy Toye been at his peak in the Jim McGuinness years, he would’ve torn it up, playing around the midfield sector probably, coming from deep with that pace he had.
Even some of the games when McGuinness brought Christy on, he got crucial scores. He was always so cool under pressure and remained a serious asset for Donegal. For me, he just had it all.
Brian Dooher (Tyrone)
I DIDN’T mind someone coming jinking at you or running at you, but see when they had just a constant engine, that was hard going. For that reason Brian Dooher has to be up there – he was non-stop.
As a wing-back, you it was always in the back of your head that if you were going off on a 60-70 metre run, then the chances are when Tyrone were breaking he’d be going the other way.
Dooher probably had the best engine of anyone I’ve seen on any Gaelic pitch, and there was plenty more to his game too. There are some guys who can run all day but they’re not accurate when it counts and you can maybe lay off a wee bit and give them room, but you couldn’t do that with Dooher because he’d punish you.
I know the Donegal-Tyrone rivalry got a bit hot and heavy at times, but Dooher got involved in verbals or anything like that. I wouldn’t have really been one for that either, unless someone started with me, but he never did.
He didn’t need to because he was very physical; he wouldn’t take a step backwards. Any time he used to take down off the line, you’d try to stay with him and when he went for a solo hop, that’s when you’d try and hit him with everything you had, but he was strong enough to bounce off tackles.
I remember one night after Christmas, a McKenna Cup game in Ballybofey. Now I’d always have gone back maybe a stone overweight in winter time, so chasing Dooher about wasn’t what you wanted to be at.
There was a point in that game where he was going through looking for the ball but the ball wasn’t there and I took him out in the ribs. I went on, jogging back into position, never really thought much of it, when he came straight back after me and rattled me in the ribs as if to say ‘don’t touch me again’. You weren’t going to dominate or bully Brian Dooher.
Brendan Jer O’Sullivan (Cork)
SOME people might not remember him, but O’Sullivan was a real stocky fella, skinhead and, like the other two, he was just so direct. Any time he got the ball he was going for goal.
The first time I played against him was in my third or fourth game for Donegal, a League match in Ballyshannon, and he wanted to do damage every time he got the ball. Guys like that, you know one slip can cost you a goal and that’s why you’d be worried.
Right through my career I’d have looked at guys before to see what they had in their locker, what kind of dummies they preferred, where they like to shoot from, any wee tells really. The boys I dreaded were the ones who didn’t take a break.
Some wing-forwards might go on a run and then take a break for five minutes then go at you again, but the likes of these lads, they just never give you a second. They would all track back but then they could hurt you on the other side too.
The three boys I’ve gone for I came up against mostly early on because in the latter part of my county career, to be honest, you didn’t really mark anybody because wing-forwards tended to drop back so you had loads of space.
That makes it hard to judge your performance because, if you had come off the pitch after marking Brian Dooher, you knew how many touches he had got. You knew what he had scored, so you knew yourself how you had done. My job was to try and keep my man scoreless; anything after that was a bonus.
Those personal duels were what you loved whereas in 2009, ’10, ’11, sometimes you could be marking two or three different men over the course of an afternoon. There were days after a match you’d have been wondering ‘how did I actually play there?’
The last few years with Gaoth Dobhair, playing forward, it’s actually been refreshing to be back to one-on-one - you against him. That’s what gets you going.
