Urris show the way: A story of progress in Donegal

Urris have written the latest success story in Inishowen after landing the junior title. Michael McMullan caught up with manager Sean Paul Doherty to hear about their progress

Sean Paul Doherty is both manager and vice-chairman of Urris. He has been around football a long time but the crowd at their recent junior final dwarfed what had gone before.
The fitness levels from a year of tuning saw them control enough of the closing stages to allow him to glance behind him, over the fence and into Dr James McDaid Stand.
O’Donnell Park was rocking. It was a wall of sound. Colour and emotion. The parish of Urris was on wheels.
“I don’t remember ever seeing a crowd like it from Urris in a match in my time,” he recalls.
For a week before their clash with Na Rossa, Clonmany was in overdrive. The days after the final ramped up the atmosphere even more.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Urris had gone 12 years since their got their hands on championship silver.
“It was great for everyone in the club, the older people who have waited too long,’ Doherty beamed.
“The other Inishowen teams have been doing well in the last number of years. It was our turn to enjoy a day in the sun.”
There were four Inishowen teams in the intermediate semi-finals with Naomh Pádraig Uisce Chaoin going all the way, booking their ticket to senior for 2027.
In what was often a hotbed of soccer, a GAA wilderness almost, things are on the turn.
“The lads are taking their football more seriously, whenever the season finishes, they’re away in the gym,” Doherty said of the change he has noticed.
“Other years, they would be playing soccer, going over from one to the other. There’s not that many playing soccer now. Inishowen would have been a soccer stronghold.”
Doherty was manager when Urris last reached the final, a 2018 defeat to eventual Ulster champions Red Hughs. In Doherty’s own words, they were ‘cleaned’, a team ahead of schedule. It was too early for them.
Many outside their bubble would’ve said the same of Urris this year. Doherty had a different inkling. He drove the message home to his players. If they perform, it would take a quality side to topple them.
On the outside, they weren’t fancied to negotiate the quarter or semi-finals. It was the same in the final with odds of 3-1.
“We saw it as a 50-50 game,” Doherty stressed, like he had told the players all year.
“If we’d put in a performance, we knew we would have a damn good chance of winning.”
It has been quite the turnaround. This time last year, they were propping up the championship before everything was stripped back to the basics.
Doherty put his cards on the table. It was time to commit. There were two choices, you were either in or you knew where the dressing door was.
They trained like dogs. It began exactly 51 weeks before this year’s final.
There was a freshness too with 10 minor players coming into the fold. They also have county minors Danny Óg Cooney and Tadhg McDaid to step into the fold next year.

NO MINOR MATTER…Urris minor won this year’s Inishowen title

Urris also entered the Ulster League, something they never had done before. It was all about getting their cornerstones in place.
“At that very first meeting I said anybody that doesn’t want to fully commit here, they can just walk on,” Doherty said. “I told them we were going to move on without them.
Buy in can be an overused term but Urris were defined by it. They needed to be.
“Their reputation had taken a hit in previous years but this year they were just phenomenal, we’ve been going over a year,” he added.
They were helped by the rebirth of a minor team in recent years of numbers not adding up. A first Inishowen minor title in two decades.
In the older ranks, there was a small pocket of committed players but others had become disillusioned before stepping away. Doherty bent their ear, outlined his plans and it helped coax them back in.
“Four or five lads didn’t kick a ball last year, but once everything came together, it was all positive from day one,” he added.
Eddie Kelly and Michael Doherty came into the management team. Derry man Emmet Thompson came in to lend a hand with coaching. He had previously been in with Gary McDaid in Glenswilly before staying on to give their minors a steer under Gerard McGrenra’s watch.
“Eddie (Kelly) had been a big player for us in the past and he just recently moved back from England last year,” Doherty added.
“He was away in Australia for a while, he was in England. We missed him in his peak years. Eddie would have been up on the Donegal senior panel in the past.
“I got him talked into playing, himself and Michael are serious help on the sideline as well.”
The initial targets were basic. Winning a championship was a possibility but not written down. Not yet.

WE DID IT…Urris manager Sean Paul Doherty celebrates winning the county title. Photo: Evan Logan

There was a focus on getting commitment among the players on the pitch, with that, it would put pride back in the jersey.
Having started training the middle of October, early base fitness was the low hanging fruit.
The Ulster League gave them a handful of games before a tough opening period in the league.
Of the first five games, four were away from home, against Letterkenny Gaels, Naomh Bríd, Convoy and Naomh Ultan. Urris picked up four points from 10, before ending up in forth place.
“If the fixtures had been reversed (with more home games earlier) we could well have got promoted (from Division Three) so it’s definitely going to be a target for next year,” Doherty added.
There was still a contentment on two fronts – the quality of their football and there was a belief they’d be in the championship conversation when it mattered.
Urris were in a tough group with Naomh Bríd and Letterkenny Gaels. They had beat Convoy by a point in the league.
With three teams emerging from the group, the Convoy game at home would make or break the season. It came after a 35-point win over Lifford.
“It was a huge game and I remember the nerves, everybody could just feel it,” Doherty said.
A defeat would leave them needing to beat either the Gaels or Naomh Bríd away from home.
Urris led by 11 points at half-time before winning by five to seal a spot in the quarter-finals.
After losing their last two group games, it took them away from the spotlight and into an away quarter-final against Naomh Colmcille who they had hammered in the league.
“They (Naomh Colmcille) had a lot of stuff going on there that a massive big fundraiser in the same weekend,” Doherty said.
“They’d won three of their four games in the group but we played really well, we controlled the game.”
Urris were semi-final winners over Naomh Ultan who had taken out Naomh Bríd in the quarters.

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Na Rossa had Declan Bonner back along the sideline. The last time he managed his native club, they won the junior title.
For Urris, they didn’t have the same level of experience. Would the occasion get to them? That was the concern.
The best part of 10 players had never even played in a semi-final and struggled to emerge from the group stages in recent years.
“I was telling the boys to enjoy it but not to get carried away about it,” Doherty said of his messaging.
“We had to play the game and not the occasion. In the first 15 minutes, we were on the ropes and hadn’t started that well.”
It was a litany of errors and turnovers but it was as if someone flicked a switch midway through the opening half. Urris began to settle and play the better football.
Leading by three points, 10 minutes into the second half, Urris missed a goal chance only for Na Rossa to hit a goal on the break to help them on the way to a two-point lead.
From then on, Urris began to get on top, Their 51 weeks of graft came to the fore. It was dominance. Doherty had been drumming it into them. If they got to the final stretch, their legs would carry them over the winning line.
“The work that was done,” he added. “It took longer than what I had hoped for the legs to show but we dominated the last, three or four minutes.
“The game was level with five minutes to go but for the rest of the game and the four minutes of injury time, we must have had 95 per cent of the ball.”
They had trained once a week from October to January before going on all in. Having fresh legs to bring in off the bench only added to their cocktail of energy.
“In the last couple of minutes, I was able to turn around and look up at the crowd,” he said, knowing they and one hand and four fingers of the other one on the cup.
“I’ve never seen a crowd at a game, the whole side of the pitch was red and black.”
After a quick bite to eat in Ballyliffin, the Urris squad came into Clonmany, with the help of a Garda escort, and into Market Square.
“It was unbelievable,” Doherty said of those special moment. “I saw a photo album from one of the local photographers.
“When you see the pictures from the crowd. I couldn’t believe it; money can’t buy that.
“People who maybe thought we weren’t going to win another championship in their time, some of those in their 70s and 80s, they were so happy to see us win it again.”
The first decade of the noughties saw Urris rubbing shoulders at the upper end of intermediate. They were a regular in the semi-finals without making a breakthrough. Losing players to emigration was a blow they never recovered from.
“There was a time that we had more people in Boston than we had at home in Clonmany,” Doherty said.

COME ON LADS…Urris supporters at the junior final. Photo: Evan Logan

Paul Friel was one, who’d end up captaining Donegal Boston to championship glory.
“We had people home from Boston to watch our final, just for two or three days and away again,” added Doherty, who has a brother over in New York.
“It means the world to them. Any time there’s any fundraising to be done at home, the boys are on the phone straight away. They’re keen to do everything they can, even though they’re not here.”
While there has been emigration, a recent influx of 20 players in the minor panel is well above the norm the perfection injection the club needs.
“In different years, we just wouldn’t have had that. You could be fielding a minor team and might only have 16,” he added.
“If you have a couple missing, you’re in bother straight away. That has happened numerous times. It just didn’t work out.
“It was tried different times there to field a minor team. We might have played two or three games and didn’t really continue on.”
Looking ahead to this weekend, Doherty knows what is coming down the tracks. One of his early feelers, before getting a proper dig into Fintona, suggests they are the best team to have come out of Tyrone at this grade for 20 years.
Speaking two weeks out from this weekend’s game, Doherty admits Fintona weren’t even on their radar. Coming from a low ebb in Donegal demanded every sinew to leave them as contenders for the title in their own county.
“We’re just delighted to be here now,” he said. “The pride in the team had been lost, people were disillusioned
“At the end of the season, there weren’t that many people out watching our games.,
“We had over a thousand people at this year’s final. It was just about putting pride back into the parish for people.
“Hopefully now whenever we’re playing these intermediate games next year, we’ll have a good crowd of them, these Inishowen derbies.

OPENING DAY…The Urris U21team are off to a winning start against Pettigo

“We just wouldn’t have had that same connection with the supporters over the last number of years. It’s definitely there at the minute and hopefully that may continue.”
During our conversation, Mickey Moran’s number flashes up on Doherty’s phone. It a word of congratulation with Moran having take a sessions with Urris a few years ago.
“He was down at his caravan and was talking to a few boys in one of the bars one night,” he recalls.
“They asked Mickey if he’d come down and take a few sessions and lads fell in love with him.”
Another proud man would’ve been Gerard Callaghan, who recently passed away after devoting his life to all things GAA in Inishowen.
“Any kind of good PR at all, the slightest thing about Inishowen, he was posting it on his Facebook,” Doherty said. “He’d definitely would have been a happy man. seeing two trophies (intermediate and junior) heading back to Inishowen.”
It’s great progress for an area of Donegal that hadn’t been laden with success but Urris is a signpost.
Trust the young, encourage the rest and get the hard yards done early. Fast forward 12 months, O’Donnell Park is a wall of noise and energy. Anything is possible. Urris have shown the way.