BY RYAN FERRY
EAMONN McBride follows the Donegal senior football team through thick and thin and he is eagerly-awaiting Sunday’s big match.
McBride is a proud Gaoth Dobhair man and his passion burns strongly for both his club and county.
He stuck by the team during a disappointing 2023 and is enjoying the feel-good factor of the set-up this term.
“I will go and watch Donegal rain, hail or snow. I just love it.
“I remember way back going to O’Donnell Park long before the stand was built to watch Donegal play Leitrim in a Division 3 match. Things are going better now than they were there.
“When you go to league games in Ballyshannon, Ballybofey or Letterkenny, you see the same people most games, but then with the Championship, another group of supporters emerges.
“I have the season ticket for about ten years now and it’s great.
“It’s nice to know that you have your ticket sorted already and you don’t have to worry about it.
“It’s my life really between supporting Donegal and Gaoth Dobhair.
“I have been to all the games this year apart from the Kildare one in Carlow.
“It’s great to have local men involved with the county team and I read all the papers and if I see even a little mention of Gaoth Dobhair, I’ll be cutting it out.
“I have stacks and stacks of cut-outs at home, and I record all the matches to watch them back again.”
McBride will set off from his home in Derrybeg early on Sunday to be up in Clones long before Martin McNally throws in the ball.
“I will set off from home early and try and get up in good time a couple of hours before the match.
“I will go by Donegal Town and up through Pettigo and on to Enniskillen. It takes around two hours.
“I like to go early and that way you beat the traffic and I’ll probably get a bite to eat when I get to Monaghan.
“If you get there early, you can get the car parked in a good spot to get on the road afterwards, but hopefully we will be hanging around for the celebrations this week.”
McBride says he was confident that Donegal would beat Derry in the Ulster quarter-final but was more nervous ahead of the Tyrone match.
Jim McGuinness’s team came through both of those challenges and they are being talked up now because of that.
McBride feels his county are in a good place but he is wary of what Armagh can offer, especially after they were edged out by Donegal in the Division 2 Final.
“My thinking is that it’s going to be a very tough game.
“We have already beaten them in a final and it’s very hard to beat a team twice in-a-row in a final.
“Rian O’Neill and ‘Soupy’ (Stefan) Campbell will all be starting this time too so it’s going to be a tight game in Clones.
“We will go in as red-hot favourites but I think it will be closer than that, and Kieran McGeeney is really going to want to win Ulster.
“But judging by the Derry and Tyrone games, I think we should have enough to get over the line.
“I don’t like to predict the scoreline in case it goes belly-up but I think Donegal will win by two or three points.”
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