DERRY GAA: ​All roads lead to Celtic Park for Derry - Donegal

The quote is from Jim McGuinness. He was speaking under the main Healy Park stand after the McKenna Cup final in January. Derry had just retained the trophy with a 0-12 to 0-6 victory in a game that saw Brendan Rogers, Oisin Gallen and Patrick McBrearty all red carded. Neither team was at full strength and it was pre-season but those last four words are the reason some home fans this weekend will be shuffling slightly more uneasily than they normally would before throw-in these days.

The tables haven't just turned for these two counties over the past five years, they've been dismantled and rebuilt, especially in Derry's case. The last time McGuinness took a Donegal team to Celtic Park in the Championship was back in 2014 when Brian McIver's Oak Leafers had just contested the Division One final. Sound familiar?

McGuinness was channelling his inner Freud by labelling the Oak Leafers favourites that May afternoon as his Donegal team, two years after lifting Sam Maguire, targeted what turned out to be their third Ulster title in four years. He knew what he was doing but there's no need for such kidology these days. The label now sits more easily with a Derry panel seeking a hat-trick of provincial titles.

Off the field many Oaks are still making themselves comfortable with their new billing and being underdogs is undoubtedly something Donegal will relish but labels don't win matches, players do and Derry presently hold the edge in that regard. Yet, such is the aura around McGuinness that those four words mean most GAA, not just in Ulster, but the country over are holding their breath and wondering: 'What will Jim bring?'

No one needs reminding of the tactical and cultural shift to the game kickstarted by his first stint as Tir Chonaill boss and while Michael Murphy was at his diplomatic Donegal best on Monday's 'GAA Social' when he talked of Derry being 4/5 years into their project and Donegal only seven months, anyone present in Healy Park for that McKenna final would say Donegal are probably seven months into 'Project Derry'. That night McGuinness approached the game like Andy Dufresne testing his Shawshank Prison walls for weakness!

This has always been the game. When McGuinness first brought Donegal out of the doldrums he used Mickey Harte's Tyrone as the kingpins to topple. Now he'll be using Mickey Harte's Derry behind the wall.

Except this isn't Jim versus Mickey, much as it suits many of us in the media to portray it as such. This is McKaigue versus McBrearty; McCluskey versus Gallen; McGrogan versus Thompson; Glass versus Langan, etc - you get the picture.

The pre-match fixation on both managers reflects a fascination with two of football's biggest and most influential characters of recent times. It's a distraction both use to deflect attention away from players and tactics. And that's where the game will be won.

The two great football minds know each other inside out, as do most of the players involved, so don't expect an open, free flowing spectacle - not initially at least - but Derry are the form team in the country and favourites for a reason. That billing may suit Donegal but Harte is too wily not to have kept a trick or two up his own sleeve. It's set for a fascinating contest. The championship just got real.