CONNACHT SFC FINAL: Seán Morantalks to manager Denis Johnson about his long involvement with Eastern Harps and the club's progress to a provincial decider

THE RED-LETTER days for Sligo football aren't plentiful but tomorrow in Pearse Stadium, Salthill, the county's champions Eastern Harps contest their first provincial final.

It promises to be a challenge, as opponents Corofin are on the trail of a fourth Connacht title and are one of the three Galway clubs to have won an All-Ireland in the space of 10 years.

The omens aren't all bad. Just last year Sligo stunned Galway at county level in the 2007 Connacht final and on the previous occasion the clubs met, six years ago, Harps won. But the context is gloomier; you have to go back 25 years to locate a club from the county, St Mary's, previously winning the provincial title.

Then there is the strange caste system of the province itself. The Connacht club championship is more exclusive than its inter-county equivalent, which has seen all five counties in the province win the Nestor Cup in the past 15 seasons. Apart from Sligo's sole interjection, the club trophy has stayed with the big three counties, Galway, Mayo and Roscommon - Leitrim have never won it.

Eastern Harps have a familiar face in charge. Manager Denis Johnson goes back with the club the 35 years to its foundation in 1973 when two junior clubs, Keash and Gurteen, weary of the struggle of trying to field teams in the teeth of emigration, amalgamated. Within two years the Harps had won a first senior county title with Johnson on the team.

When his playing career gave way to coaching he had charge of the senior side for most of the 1990s, helping add another three county titles before taking a sabbatical from the club.

That time gave him the opportunity to move around to other clubs in the region: Strokestown, Charlestown, Allen Gaels, whom he took to a Leitrim title in 2002 and Sligo IT, who he helped to Sigerson success in 2004.

Back for the past two years he says that disappointment last year built the base, as it often does, for this season's achievements.

"We were beaten in the county final by Tourlestrane by a couple of points," according to Johnson, "so that made us even more determined to win it this year and the day we had it won we said we were going for Connacht.

"A lot of the lads on the panel have been playing a while but the team is quite young outside of the oldest three or four. There's a fair sprinkling of 21 to 24-year-olds."

The most influential of the older players is undoubtedly Paul Taylor, the former county star, who was recently asked on board as a selector by new Sligo manager and Galway All-Ireland winner Kevin Walsh. His performances on the field have however prompted some to wonder whether he should be on the other side of the white lines.

Although they have an outstanding go-to forward the team's style is well established.

"From way back," says Johnson, "Harps have been a running team. We move the ball. We can mix it but that's our tradition. Paul's our leading scorer but we can vary it when we want."

Taylor's county career was disrupted to the point of ruination by injuries but fully fit he has been lethal for the club this season both from frees and play, averaging over 7.5 points a match in an uninterrupted run from the county semi-finals.

Playing at full forward he is the focus of the Harps' attack and proved the key player in the upset win over Mayo champions, Ballaghaderreen.

County officer Pádraig Duffy, the club's founding secretary, says that, although the crowds travelling to Salthill won't be as large as the support might have been had the wheel of home-and-away arrangements not dictated that the Galway club get venue advantage, there will be "very good support" for the club.

Johnson says the success of the county footballers a year previously has had a positive effect on his team.

"We have a number of lads that were on that team. Those boys have the experience of winning Connacht and the younger lads look up to them.

"We've also two games under our belt outside of the county and that gives you a bit extra."

It's 10 years since Paul Taylor captained the club to victory in the county final and poignantly dedicated the success to the memory of his young brother Bobby, aged 16, and two of his friends, Tommy Coyle and Michael Higgins, who in a disaster that devastated the community and attracted national attention drowned in May 1998 having been carried away by a rip-tide on Strandhill beach.

Writing about the 10th anniversary of that traumatic event earlier this year the club website wondered: "Whether the sad loss had a galvanising effect on our senior players or we were inspired from above by our three young deceased, we went on to win the senior county championship later that year," before wondering presciently, "can those ten-year links with 1998 inspire us to another senior championship win this year".

So far they've been inspired.