IT’S a big weekend ahead for Bonagee United as they celebrate their Golden Jubilee, and the first ever senior team from the club to win silverware will also toast a milestone.
Thirty years ago, a Bonagee team managed by Christopher Wade, won the Downtown Cup after they eased past Pharmacia at the Diamond Park in Ballyare.
Much has changed in the intervening times but the memories of that success remain and that victorious team from 1995 will don the boots once again on Saturday evening to take on a Bonagee Legends team, who will be under the guidance of Paul Doherty.
“Bonagee are fifty years old this year and they are having a function on Saturday and that ties in nicely with the anniversary of the club winning its first ever trophy in the Donegal League,” Wade told the Donegal News.
“We had actually planned on doing this in 2020 to celebrate the 25th anniversary but obviously Covid was about and that scuppered the whole thing.
“So we have had to wait a few years and bide our time. I went back to Bonagee and asked about a celebration for the 30th anniversary and they have been absolutely spot on about it.
“So our team will play a Bonagee Legends team at 5.30pm at the Showgrounds on Saturday.
“Out of the squad that we had, I think I have managed to get them all apart from two back together, and that’s only because Brendan Dempsey lives in Australia and Shay Ponsonby lives in Norway.
“Everyone else who was part of the squad for the final will be there on Saturday. There are a couple that can’t play due to medical reasons because we aren’t as young as we used to be.
“I think nine of the boys will take to the field and the others will be there for the occasion, and the club have then invited us over to the Clanree to be part of the 50th celebrations.
“It works very well because the coincidental thing is Saturday is the 31st of May and that’s actually the date thirty years ago when we won the cup.”
Christopher Wade ,Joe McLaughlin, Patrick Doherty and Eddie Gallagher
Wade scored a hat-trick in the final but he says the semi-final triumph over a fancied Downtown side was even more crucial in their success.
They headed to Ballyare with confidence after that and won 7-0 in the decider with man-of-the-match Anthony Anderson, Johnny Moore, Paul Jordan, and Robert Moore also on target.
“The final was played in Ballyare and we took on Pharmacia, which was a factory team in Letterkenny at the time.
“In the semi-final we actually beat Downtown United who at that time were the best team in Donegal League Saturday football.
“They were like the Man City of that time. They had a cracking team and were winning the league nearly every single year.
“They were hot favourites to win the cup as well but we beat them 1-0 the previous Friday night after extra-time at Goose Green.
“It was a crazy game and how we won it, I’ll never know!
“We beat Pharmacia 7-0 in the final. We scored after about ten seconds and they had a man sent off in the first half. It was nearly an anti-climax because the semi-final was the big one.
“The club was going since 1975 but that was the first trophy in the Donegal League.
“I was only 18 or 19 when I took the team over and I was 20 when we played the final.
“It was a young side, and four or five of the team were made up of boys that I would have played with for Lurgybrack in the Town League.
“We had a few boys from Ballymaleel out near Ramelton but everyone else was local, which you don’t really get these days as there are boys coming in from everywhere.”
Wade says the celebrations went long into the wee hours as the squad made the most of their triumph.
“We met at the Showgrounds before we were meant to leave and had a warm-up and a mess around and then Jamesie Doherty drove us up to Ballyyare in his coach.
“We enjoyed the craic in the dressing room afterwards and there were a few bottles popped and what not and we went back to Letterkenny then in a cavalcade of cars.
“We were out windows and sun-roofs, singing and shouting all the way down the main street.
“We did a full lap of the town and spent the night in the Downtown who were sponsoring the cup.
“It was nice because a few of the Downtown boys came in and there was a friendly rivalry between the two teams.”
There was more success after that initial Downtown Cup triumph and most of the team remained part of the Bonagee fabric in the years that followed.
Wade explained: “A lot of us transitioned into the Bonagee Sunday Donegal League team.
“That team then would have won promotion in the Donegal League Premier Division for the first time in the club’s history and qualified for the national stages of the FAI Junior Cup.
“We got to regional finals of the Sportsman’s Cup as well, so a lot of those boys were playing together for five or six years and then there other distractions and responsibilities in the mid-twenties and what have you.
“Some of the boys played for Bonagee’s Ulster Senior League team as well so it did feed into the club’s success at that time.”
Wade is now living in Darlington in England and tries to keep in contact with as many of his old teammates as he can.
Everyone has different priorities these days but they are all looking forward to taking a trip down memory lane at Bonagee and the Clanree on Saturday.
“I actually was over in Oslo in February and met up with Shay Ponsonby.
“I’d see a few of the boys when I’m back home, but there are others that I haven’t seen in nearly thirty years.
“You build friends for life and it’s a different type of friend group that you develop through playing football.
“That echoes through the fact that it’s still talked about so far down the track and we are all in contact even though we don’t see each other regularly.
“Fingers crossed all goes well on Saturday now.”
The Bonagee United squad that won the Downtown Cup in 1995 was as follows: Chris Wade (player/manager), Brendan Dempsey, Stephen Sweeney, Patrick Doherty, Cathal Doherty, Joe McLaughlin (captain), Paul Jordan, Robert Moore, Johnny Moore, Gerard Dunleavy, Anthony Anderson, Seamus Nallen, Eddie Gallagher, Shay Ponsonby.
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