By John Harrington

John Haran is a lot more accustomed to playing in county finals than watching them, so he’s pretty certain he’s in for a tough afternoon on Sunday when St. Eunan’s, Letterkenny play Naomh Conaill in the Donegal SFC Final.

Now club chairman, he was a mainstay of the team for 23 years and was man of the match when the Letterkenny club last won a county title back in 2014.

Playing in County Finals was a regular experience for a good chunk of his life and he was the sort of player who was invariably in the thick of the action, so whoever is beside him in the stand on Sunday will most likely have sore ribs by the time the final whistle has blown.

“I won eight and lost five, so that's 13 I played and there was a replay in there too,” says Haran. “It was great there for years, and I'll tell you it's a lot easier playing in matches than watching them.

“This will be the first County Football Final I'll have watched since I stopped playing myself and I'm looking forward to it in one way and dreading it in another. I just hope to God we come out on the right side of it, but I find it very hard to watch from the stand.

“You can't do anything about it, and you'd just love for your club to win a championship. It's hard watching, you're roaring and shouting and you're kicking every ball in your head. It's very hard, very different.”

Haran is speaking from experience because last weekend St. Eunan’s won the Donegal SHC Final against Setanta by a single point with the game ending in a welter of excitement and nerves.

It was a massive shock, Setanta had hammered them earlier in the campaign, and the achievement felt all the more significant because it ended a long famine without a county hurling title for the club.

“It was mighty,” says Haran. “The first time in 49 years and the boys have been beaten in three or four finals recently and they would have been beaten in finals back around the mid noughties too.

“So it was brilliant for the club, hurling had kind of died out for a while there maybe in the late seventies, early eighties. Then a couple of ones got it going in the early nineties and made a revival.

“From that point of view it's brilliant. A lot of our own home-grown players have come through the academy which is brilliant.

“Plenty of dual players too on the senior team and our senior reserve team which are both in the county final on Sunday in the football, the seniors and the senior B footballers. It's great for the club, it's a big boost for everyone.

“We also did the double the last time the hurlers won it in 1972. It would be absolutely brilliant if we could do the same 49 years later this Sunday, but the footballers are going to be up against it against a Naomh Conaill team going for three-in-a-row.

“They're a very experienced outfit whereas this is a somewhat new team for us coming through. The last time we were in the final was 2015 so this is going to be the first final for a good number of our players. Five or six of our players have played in four or five finals so I suppose we have a good mixture of youth and experience.”

After a few years in the doldrums by their very high standards, their run to Sunday’s Final is thanks in no small part to the injection of freshness and quality those younger players have brought to the St. Eunan's panel.

The emergence of a new, very talented generation of players is the product of a lot of hard work at underage level in the club.

“There's a Sunday morning academy where we start with U-5s all the way up,” says Haran. “We've had good success down through the years at underage. We've always been there or there abouts at U-16 and minor in finals and a lot of these boys would have won the U-16 Paul McGirr trophy which is effectively the Ulster U-16 club title and they would have gotten to an Ulster minor club title up in Belfast and were beaten in the final of that.

“There's good pedigree there with these younger players but the step up to winning silverware in the senior grade is still going to be a big ask for them, but we're very hopeful.

“The senior football championship is the blue riband event in Donegal and what you're judged by. It doesn't matter if you've won every underage club title under the sun, if you don't win the senior championship some people will see it as an unsuccessful year.

“That's very harsh, but that's the way you're judged, that's the way people look at it. It's the blue riband event, it's live on TV, and there's going to be a big crowd there. That's the showcase day, that's where the club wants to be, and we're there on Sunday.

“A lot of hard work goes on behind the scenes to get teams there. All the mentors at underage have put in hours and hours of effort at every level just to train lads and get them ready so it's great for those coaches to see those players come through and make the senior team and go out on county final day. They're bound to feel a lot of pride in that.”

St Eunan’s contested 12 county finals in 19 years from 1997 to 2015 so challenging for silverware was taken as a given in that period.

Maybe it even became something that was taken for granted, but the fact that Sunday’s County Final ends a six-year wait for one has whetted everyone’s appetite in the club.

“It does,” says Haran. “You can see that around the town. There was a period there from '97 to 20015 where we were in a county every year or second year. The fact that six years have passed since the last Final and a lot of our younger players have never been in a county final before has added to the buzz.

“We've got plenty of flags and bunting up around the town which is great to see. It's great for the town that there's a bit of razzmatazz going on and kids are asking their parents can they go to the Final.

“Hopefully it’ll be a great day for everyone associated with the club.”