It didn’t seem like much of a gamble. By the middle of March five League games for Donegal had brought five withering defeats. Dublin had arrived in Ballyshannon a month earlier and won by four points pulling up. The other four were routs. Picturing Donegal in an All-Ireland quarter-final required a vast imaginative leap. “We were due to fly to Italy on Saturday,” Blake laughs, “but we had to cancel first thing last Monday. My better half wasn’t best pleased but there you go.”
As a way of measuring the distance Donegal have travelled, there are few better illustrations. While Laois and Fermanagh have given the football season its colour and supplied its most vibrant headlines, Donegal have arguably been the year’s highest achievers. Between the thrilling draw against Dublin almost 12 months ago to the day and their dispiriting replay collapse, Donegal seemed to lose something of their soul. It was hard to see them back so soon.
Following that 10-point mauling a harsh, early winter set in. On the night of the drawn game most of the panel stayed in Dublin and rumours circulated of a boisterous session in a Donegal-owned pub. According to Blake, one of those on the near-empty bus, the stories were exaggerated but the fall-out was severe.
“To be fair a few drinks were taken but it was blown out of all proportion. I think it was one of reasons why certain individuals were reluctant to put their names forward when we needed a new manager. They thought they’d be inheriting a group from Alcoholics Anonymous or something like that. We let it slip the first day, simple as that.”
But Blake has got ahead of the story. In the dressing-room after the Dublin mauling John Morrison, their influential trainer, announced his resignation. Mickey Moran decamped to Derry two weeks later. Danny Harkin was another loss. Harkin was chairman of the county board but, more than that, a friend to the players.
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Before the replay against Dublin, Harkin had caused a minor stir when he publicly stated that the players should be paid ¤300 a week during the championship instead of the ¤127 advocated by the GPA. It was an honest, heartfelt statement, brimming with political naivete. At the county convention four months later Harkin would be deposed.
“Danny’s honesty cost him his job,” says Blake, his voice rising with anger. “He was speaking personally and not on behalf of the county board but he got shafted for it. So much for freedom of speech. Danny always looked after us and made sure we got what we needed. Maybe some people didn’t like him for that.”
Away from the glare of publicity, Donegal imploded. Brian McEniff was coaxed into taking over from Harkin and a foundation for healing was laid. But it was far from painless. The issue of Moran’s successor dragged on and Donegal became a laughing stock.
In early January the senior players called a crisis meeting with McEniff and impressed upon him the urgency of appointing a manager. Finally they cajoled him into taking up the reins himself. It wasn’t ideal but it was the best they could do.
“Sure the rest of the country were saying we can’t take Donegal seriously,” says Blake. “We couldn’t get a manager. We couldn’t even get our county championship finished. But at the end of the day you get politics in every county board and when Brian stepped in he got some smart people involved who know what it’s all about.”
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Blake sort of knew McEniff. Everybody did. When McEniff brought Donegal to the summit in 1992 Blake, along with a thousand or so others, watched proceedings in the Hammersmith Odeon in London. It was a bittersweet moment. McEniff had brought him into the panel a year earlier but the prospect of observing Gary Walsh from a splintery bench didn’t enthuse him. With a civil engineering degree in his pocket, the lights of London seemed brighter.
“I didn’t know how to react,” he says. “Overjoyed that Donegal had won but disappointed too. I felt like, ‘Damn it, I should be there.’”
For a time he flitted between Ireland, England and America. He played League of Ireland soccer in the winter and also joined the GAA exodus abroad; a ball of a life. Then his course changed during Christmas 1997, a chance meeting with Declan Bonner the catalyst.
“I was home from London and I bumped into Declan in Letterkenny. He’d just become Donegal manager and we spent 20 minutes chatting and I decided then that I wasn’t going back. He was very persuasive.”
By the time the 1998 Ulster semi-final came around he’d usurped regular goalkeeper Paul Callaghan and hasn’t missed a championship game since. Donegal is his sporting life now. Over the years he has kept goal for Sligo Rovers, Omagh Town and Finn Harps but the summer season has put paid to his dual status. He says it isn’t a bind.
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GAA is his choice even though he hails from a soccer family. His father Eunan was a founder-father of Letterkenny Rovers and enjoyed a successful career playing for Finn Harps, Derry City and Sligo. They still curse his luck, though. When Harps won the 1974 FAI Cup final, Eunan had just returned from injury and wasn’t included in the squad.
In all, reckons Tony, his father missed out on four Cup medals due to injuries and when he himself was part of the Sligo team that beat Derry in 1994 he gave his medal to him. “Sure I’ll have plenty more years to get one,” he said.
A medal of any hue would do him now. Three years ago he was part of the Ulster team that won the Railway Cup and he wonders why his trophy cabinet remains bare. To some it might seem trivial, to Blake it is a cause celebre. To him, nothing better sums up the casual disregard the GAA has for players.
“I was talking to someone in Croke Park a while ago and this guy says, ‘Sure the Railway Cup is fading and people are losing interest’ and I said it’s no wonder they’re losing interest because the players will lose interest if they don’t get a memento for winning a national competition. I’ve won a Railway Cup and been in two provincial finals and I’ve no mementoes.”
And yet when the anger subsides the thrill reappears. When he walks out in front of 80,000 spectators tomorrow he will remember why he made the choice he did. And he knows he will need to savour it too. The memory could be the only memento he receives.
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Galway v Donegal
Monday, Net 2, 1.45pm, throw-in 2pm