In 1997, a shadow hung over the Dungiven senior team.

The year previous, the St Canice’s footballers had reached the county
final where they met Bellaghy.

The team, which boasted All-stars Brian McGilligan, Kieran McKeever
and Joe Brolly were beaten by 2-11 to 0-7. A frustrating defeat for
the north Derry side.

Frustrating because the men from Dungiven felt that they had not
got what they deserved.

Th club had been champions in 1983, 84, 87 and 91, but after a five
year drought, that 96 final stung because they knew they were better
than that.

Joe Brolly was one of the stars of the team, but he said that the team
was full of brilliant players.

“It was such a talented football team. When we put our mind to it we
were so aggressive.

“We had Emmett McKeever who was ferocious. If you ever started
anything with Emmett you had better be ready to finish it because he
was going to the bitter end. On or off the field. Like Kieran
(McKeever). They had that thing of however far you would go, they
would go farther.

“We had Ryan Murphy who had been brilliant. Barry McGonagle was number
six for us. He was a brilliant player, and had won a Hogan cup with
Maghera, he was the centre back when Derry were the All-Ireland minor
champions with Anthony Tohill and those boys.

“We had myself, McKeever and McGilligan, three All-stars. We had very
good players, Shane Heavron, and Cathal Grieve.”

Then there was also the inimitable Geoffrey McGonagle, who was a mere
24-years-old a the time.

As Brolly said: “Geoffrey was a fabulously skilful, entertaining
footballer.”

It was the partnership of Brolly and McGonagle up front that was so
important. McGonagle himself said of the pairing: “We had to be
watched. We had a real good understanding on the field. He contributed
to what I was doing and I contributed to what he was doing.

“I would do the rough and tumble and he would do the fancy stuff.”
Some of that fancy stuff involved taking the mickey out of their
markers.

McGonagle said: “He was the best at it. He stood and talked to the
defenders. And then when the ball came he was away and put the ball
into the net. When Joe started to slabber you couldn’t but listen to
him.

“Me and Joe used to destroy teams. We had a real good understanding.
But look when you had boys like Paul Murphy and Cathal Grieve there
who could pass the ball, it was easy. Once we moved, we got it. They
could pass a ball 40 or 50 yards. All you had to do was put your hand
out, then you would get the ball and put over the bar or in the net.
Easy. The boys out the field did all the hard work.”

Murphy and Grieve were the phenoms, to borrow American parlance.
Shockingly young, they were able to win their starting place on that
incredible team such was their precocious talent.

Murphy for example was just 17 years old in 1997, but he said that he
was welcomed onto that team.

Murphy said: “If you were good enough you were playing, even if you
were young. Eugene Kelly was the manager. It didn’t matter what age
you were. Even though there was some exceptional talent around.

“The older lads would have supported that. They would have been
encouraging younger lads to come through, and to push on and make the
team.”

Indeed Brolly also felt that Eugene Kelly had an important part to
play on the team.

Kelly was a player manager, and very young in his late 20s when he was
taking that team.Yet he had a vision for the team.

As Brolly explained: “Eugene Kelly was the manager, the player
manager. He was very young. He was the thinking man about the
football. He understood how to put the team together.

“He was a bit like the description of Tony Hanahoe of the Dublin team
of the late ’70s. Completely selfless, he had no interest in anything
other than the team, and that the right players got on the ball at the
right time.”

Brolly said that Kelly changed the mentality of the team that year.
They were more confident, and they were set up better to take on their
opponents.

Something needed to change following the previous years defeat in the
county final.

Murphy explained that they had suffered a bad defeat.
“We were beat by Bellaghy in the county final in Celtic Park pretty
convincingly. That was my first year of senior football.

“Dungiven played badly. For the team that they had, Dungiven should
have been better. Bellaghy had a strong team. Dungiven was equally as
strong.

“That team had a lot of exceptionally talented men. There was no
tactics or game plan like a blanket defence. That team were just told
to go and play. A lot of them players had success with schools and
county. It was an exceptional team.”

It was a strong era for Derry football. From the late eighties during
the 90s teams like Glenullin, Newbridge, Lavey, Bellaghy, Ballinderry
and Dungiven won titles.

Murphy said that it was extremely tough. “The standard in Derry club
football back then was exceptionally high. There were three or four
teams in Derry who were competing in Derry, but also in Ulster and
could have pushed on further than that. I know Sleacht Neill have
pushed on these days and are very strong, but the standard is not the
same.”

Yet after losing in 1996, Dungiven had belief.

As Murphy said: “We were confident. We had three of the 93 All-Ireland
winning team. Then we had younger talent like Geoffrey McGonagle,
Emmett McKeever and Ryan Murphy. Then you had younger lads like myself
and Cathal Grieve. So there was a good mixture. We had a strong team
and we thought that we would always be challenging.”

The Lavey game was the key match in 1997. They had been champions in
1992 and 1993, and won an All-Ireland club title in the 1990-91 season.
Their semi-final was a massive game, and the county packed in to watch
it.

As Brolly said, it was a game that caught the imagination of the county.
He said: “Lavey always hated playing us because we were the one team
that could beat them. The difference was we would go and beat Lavey,
and then lose to someone we shouldn’t lose to.”

Dungiven put it up to them in the first game, but the match finished
as a draw.

There was a feeling that Dungiven had missed their chance.
As Murphy said: “We drew with Lavey, everybody said that Lavey was
going to wipe Dungiven out in the replay.”

It wouldn’t happen that way, and the St Canice’s would surprise their
doubters in the second meeting.

Murphy continued: “I can remember big Brian McGilligan rearing up in
the changing room. He got us revved up at half time, and we never
looked back.

“It was a great day, everyone just clicked. We actually went to town
on them.

“After beating Lavey that was the push that we needed.”
Next up for Dungiven was Castledawson in the county final. The
Canice’s tails were up and they weren’t going to lose in the final.
As Brolly said: “Castledawson were young and talented. But it was
never a game. I think I maybe scored 1-6, and set up Geoffrey for a
goal at the end.”

They cruised to a 2-9 to a 0-9 win.
The euphoria erupted, as the team celebrated after a six year gap.
They were back on top.

For a young player like Murphy the atmosphere was unreal.
“The county final was a surreal experience. I was young, 17, and maybe
didn’t appreciate it. I thought back then that championships were
going to come flying in the gate. That’s not the way it works. We got
back in 2010, against the Loup, we were never back after that. I maybe
took things for granted.

“I appreciated it more afterwards back in the club when you saw the
celebrations. Looking back on it so much you realise how much it meant.”
For other men on the team, older men, the goal to win Ulster was
important.

Murphy, perhaps in hindsight, understood that they attitude towards
the 97 Ulster championship was different.

“I think Dungiven headed into the Ulster Championship in 1983 and
1984, 1987 and 1991, and hadn’t really taken it that seriously. But
Lavey kicked on and won in 1991. Teams after that coming out of Derry
were serious about challenging.”

For men like Brolly, McKeever, and McGilligan, the more senior
players, an Ulster title was very important as they knew that these
opportunities don’t come around often.

But it was Kelly who wanted to make sure the heads were right.
Brolly explained that their young manager made a remarkably audacious
move to prepare the team for the Ulster campaign.

“Eugene Kelly asked me to get Seamus Downey in to tell us what we
needed to do to win Ulster. Lavey were our arch enemies. But I would
have been friendly with Seamus, and Kieran would have been friendly
with Seamus, because through the county Eamonn had cured a whole lot
of those divisions. So Seamus came to us, and he is a great reader of
the game, he said ‘look, boys you have got the hard work done, winning
Derry is the hard part, winning Ulster is easy’.”

That set Dungiven on course for the Ulster final. And Brolly was in
scintillating form, racking up huge scores against Newtownbutler, and
then St Paul’s in the semi-final.

Brolly said: “I was in the form of my life. Everything I touched
turned to gold.”

And then they came up against the mighty Errigal Ciaran, who boasted
one of the greatest forwards to ever play the game in Peter Canavan.
There is mixed opinions on how they were feeling about this game.
According to Murphy, there was trepidation.

Murphy said: “We were underdogs against Errigal Ciaran, they had the
Canavan brothers.”

Yet Brolly sees the game differently.
He said: “All I can remember is that we weren’t the slightest bit
concerned about them because they were small. We had McGilligan at
midfield, and we had Kieran McKeever to mark Peter Canavan.
Emmett McKeever went on Eoin Gormley and mentally overwhelmed him.
Kieran went on Peter Canavan. I think Peter said once that his
misfortune was to be born at the same time as Kieran McKeever. That
was our best team performance.”

But the win wasn’t straightforward. Disaster struck early on in the
game when Brolly, who had been so brilliant in the lead up to the
final, hobbled off with ligament injury.
Murphy said Dungiven collectively were worried.

“We lost Joe after 15 mintues. People would have thought ‘Jesus,
Brolly’s gone’ but we pushed on and beat them.”
They beat Errigal partly due to the brilliance of their defence in
snuffing out the threat of the Errigal attack, but mostly because of
Geoffrey McGonagle’s extraordinary performance.

Brolly described his performance like so: “In the Ulster club football
final he had played absolutely beautifully.”

McGonagle scored four points in the 0-14 to 1-8 victory. Yet it was
not the points that McGonagle remembers from that final.

He said: “The highlight of my career was winning the Ulster Club in
1997. When you win things with your club that is extra special.
“I played along with my brother that year too, he was only 20-21. It’s
looking at the crowd, all the Dungiven ones. Our own people. You
couldn’t ask for better than that.
“It was a real good moment.”

The Ulster final was a great memory in the club’s history, a crucially
important one, and a proud one for the club.

Yet for all the players, the memory of the All-Ireland club semi-final
against Corofin, is one that they can’t forget because the players
believe they missed a golden opportunity.

Murphy put it like this: “We probably should have won that game. It
was close. It was a dogged day in Ballyshannon. It was one that got
away. They were a good team.”

Corofin were something of an unknown quantity back then, and while
Dungiven were confident, things did not go to plan.

The simplistic story line is that losing Saoirse McGonagle to an early
sending off, put the game beyond them. Corofin used their extra man to
double mark Brolly, who had recovered from ligament damage, and the
game was up.

Geoffrey, Saoirse’s older brother, certainly feels like that was the
reason they lost, but not simply because it was a numbers game.
“The younger brother got sent off after 15 minutes and they might as
well have took me off as well, because after that my head just went.

It was frustration and annoyance. I admit that. It took me half an
hour to get my head sorted. When I finally settled down and started to
play a bit it was too late. We underachieved that day.”

However, the way Brolly sees it, the conclusion to that fateful season
is more complicated than that.
“The semi-final was weird.

“We had to go Ballyshannon, there was no atmosphere, we didn’t have
the feeling that we were in an All-Ireland semi-final. That battle
rhythm that we had been in. We just weren’t in it that day. Once they
were better than we thought they were.

“It was one of those ones that slipped away.”

Brolly argued that the defeat cannot be laid a the feet of Saoirse, or
Geoffrey.

“I don’t know why it happened (Saoirse getting sent off) because
Saoirse was not an indisciplined player.

“Geoffrey got upset and Geoffrey wasn’t able to concentrate on the
game. I was left on my own, but I was being double marked.

“Obviously the sending off was huge a disaster, but still and all we
should have been able to compensate for that because we had the
players.”

And that led Brolly to admit that he was as much at fault for losing
the final than anyone.

“The responsibility for that All-Ireland final was mine. I had to
perform.

“I would have said that I was middling in the All-Ireland semi-final,
but middling wasn’t good enough.

“I had the ability, I had the temperament to do it, to drive the team
on.

“So I think of Lavey winning the All-Ireland title. The way Henry and
Johnny drove them on, and up front Seamus Downey took responsibility,
but it was Henry and Johnny.

“From our perspective it was for me and McKeever to drive the team on.
The players were around us. They responded when we led. But that’s it.
That’s life. I’ve been very lucky in my career to play with the
players that I have played with, but that one was down to me. You
don’t ever really recover from that, you just deal with it yourself.

“Every time I am in the club, which is regularly, after my father died
we were there. The place was throbbing, all the old team mates were
there. But in the back of your mind you are thinking, ‘We should have
been All-Ireland champions’. It was an awful shame what happened. We
genuinely should have won that All-Ireland that year. We had the
players, it was the right time for us.”