THERE’S almost nobody in the restaurant. The tall, lean, unmistakable figure of Jim McGuinness sweeps through the door, searching past a blissfully unaware elderly couple.
It’s quiet but as Wednesday afternoon lunchtime beckons in Letterkenny, that’s liable to change.
The corner table is abandoned. Upstairs, to a table on a landing that overlooks the ground floor.
Lifts don’t open. The stairs. He turned 52 four days earlier.
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“Will you still be ok with the stairs?” you chide. Laughter. He’s in good form.
The knee that he buckled in 2005, the knee that inadvertently led him down the coaching route, is in bother again.
Running around the roads of Creeslough keeps him in order. That has been reduced to a walk. Plenty of it, though. It’s where he does 90 per cent of his thinking.
Donegal’s season ended 120 days ago. Two weeks earlier than…planned?
How could Donegal, a pig’s ear the year earlier, be so quickly turned to silk that had notions of an All-Ireland?
In 2011, year one of McGuinness’s first term, Donegal won Ulster and lost an All-Ireland semi-final.
In 2024, year one of term two, Donegal won Ulster and lost an All-Ireland semi-final.
Year two went well the first time.
Donegal moved on from the infamous Dublin game very quickly.
Football might only move on today, if delegates at Special Congress hit tá on their keypad.
Eighteen rule proposals designed to break a stranglehold that remains inexorably associated to that semi-final in 2011.
For the bits that feel the same, plenty feels different too.
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Cahair O’Kane: The blame for football’s ills is laid at the door of the Dublin game in 2011 and at your door. Do you feel a sense of responsibility for the direction the game has taken? It was a major tactical shift.
Jim McGuinness: It was absolutely tactical. Dublin, with Pat Gilroy, were playing a very clear way. In reality now, you would say it was defensive in that the six defenders didn’t go beyond the defensive 65. They kicked the ball, they expected the forwards to win it and they didn’t really join in. We thought if we bring everybody back except Colm [McFadden] and set up in a certain way, we’re facing eight players, how are we gonna concede? Which came to bear. We thought this is gonna work. In theory, when we were turned the ball over, we were working hard on six, seven, eight players going, so their three half-backs would have been meeting six or seven or eight. We were down in a training camp in Inishowen before that game. You never try to get ahead of yourself as a coach, never. You always try to be cautious. But I remember one Saturday watching it, Christy Toye was bombing, Michael [Murphy] was bombing, everyone was bombing. And you’re thinking this could be really exciting. But that didn’t come to bear on the match. We slowed ourselves up, we didn’t have that ruthlessness to explode and get at them and stretch them. We’re on about the new rules, in terms of unintended consequences, I suppose it did move the needle. There’s no doubt about that. Teams maybe looked at us and said ‘they’re not that good but they’re good enough to take big teams on.’ I think a lot of teams connected with that because there are only a couple of teams in any county that can win the championship. What about the rest of them? And they looked at it and thought ‘we can be part of big days as well’. The problem with that is we were very well drilled, very fit, very intensive and we were able to bring a level. When teams adopted that tactic, getting players back, no intensity, no fitness levels, none of the lynchpins of making that happen.
CO: How do you assess those few years now?
JMcG: A young manager and a young team trying to right the wrongs of two decades and end up at the top table. We achieved that. We achieved our goals. We won Ulster in ‘11, we won it in ‘12 and went on to win the All-Ireland because we worked incredibly hard in the second year in particular on the part that didn’t work against Dublin. That was a seminal moment for me because when I reflected on that winter in 2011. The transitional moment that should have happened in the game, that was happening the week before, why did that not happen? We didn’t do it. We didn’t execute it. So I had to dig very, very deep tactically to come up with a style that could be far more trustworthy and relentless that you could hang your hat on. When we added that piece on and retained the defensive part, we ended up winning it.
CO: If someone was to say the problems with football are all your fault, do you agree with that?
JMcG: No.
CO: Do you flat out disagree with it or do you accept there’s a bit of it that’s your responsibility?
JMcG: It depends how you look at it. I think players have never been better attacking wise and the skill level has never been higher because of the questions that they’ve asked. Defensive structures have made players far more skilful. This is what’s gonna be very interesting now in the next phase. The game’s always changing. In the ‘70s people were giving out about the handpasses. They’ve always gave out about Donegal. I remember that before I went into the county team, I remember that when I was in the county team, and in many respects people in Donegal don’t care. The same way they don’t care the motorway stops in Cavan, it stops in Monaghan, it stops in Tuam, we’re cut off, we’re isolated.
CO: You say you don’t care but you do?
JMcG: I care about the game. I care about the game.
CO: But you’re talking about Donegal being isolated, you use that as fuel?
JMcG: Pat Spillane was writing desperate articles about Donegal in 1992. In 1992! It’s not a new phenomenon.
CO: You do use it though, it is fuel?
JMcG: Nah, it’s not fuel for us. It is what it is with us. We’re nobody’s fools. If there’s a referendum, we’ll vote the way we see the situation, not the way we’re supposed to see the situation. Because maybe there’s a part of it that nobody really cares. We don’t care about what’s going on out there either because it’s not reciprocal. That part of the psyche might make it easier for me, to have a water off a duck’s back scenario because that’s all we’ve ever known. They wanted us to kick the ball, we wanted to keep the ball. That’s 1992. That’s our business, not anybody in Dublin or anyone else’s business how we want to play the game. That was always in my mind, we’re gonna do what’s right for Donegal and try to get results for Donegal. There was unintended consequences there. But that’s what life is all about. It’s about moments. Seeing moments. Acting on those moments. Would you change it? Would I go back and forego those Ulster titles and All-Ireland? No I would not. But people don’t want to remember that we won the All-Ireland with three up, and in every single game in the four or five games in the lead-up to that [Dublin game in 2011] it was three up. That moment happened in the Dublin semi-final and that’s the way we were forevermore Amen. That’s it. They want to put that in a box and that’s fine. I couldn’t care less about that. We’re kicking 2-23 this year in games and ‘there’s flaws in the game’. ‘Not good enough defensively’. If you start thinking about what other people think, you’re nowhere as a coach, I believe. You have to do what’s right for your county, what’s right for the group of players you’re working with and what you have at your disposal. We tapped into our own traditional running game to win the All-Ireland in 2012. I’m very proud of that because it’s in line with how we won the first one. The first one was so special and being part of that was so special. I understood how that was built because I was there and I felt the ‘12 success tipped its hat at that. Even though other people might say ‘I don’t like that style’, for me, that makes me feel good because that identity, what goes on in club football with the wind coming in off the Atlantic, it happens every day of the week. That style got us over the line in ‘92 and it happened in ‘12 again.
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IT is against the barometer of 2011 to 2014 that Jim 2.0 was always destined to be judged.
Yet within that, they were two different teams. Their All-Ireland winning year gets boxed off with how they played in that Dublin game. Unfairly so, for they were a vastly improved attacking unit the following season.
His second attempt is right on track.
Asked this time last year, they’d have taken winning an Ulster title by beating Armagh in a penalty shootout, reaching the last four and taking it to the wire.
But in the time that has passed since Matthew Tierney ran across Shaun Patton’s path, facilitating a Paul Conroy goal that took Galway to a second final in three years, a sense of regret has tried to force its way up through the cracks.
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CO: How have the last four months compared to the four months after that Dublin game in terms of how you evaluated yourself and your own part in it, and what you could do better and different?
JMcG: We’re in purgatory at the minute, that’s the problem. In 2011, I knew what happened and was thinking we need to sort that out, we need to come up with a plan that gives us the same efficiency going forward as back the way otherwise we’re not gonna win the All-Ireland. We know where we are now as a group but we dunno what the rules are. We’re sitting here now with no clue what’s in, what’s not in, what’s gonna work, what’s not gonna work. No pre-season tournaments to understand it. It’s learning in real time in the National League, which I think will make it exciting. In terms of being able to self-reflect, you’re more reflecting about the positive things that worked well that will absolutely be there next year. There’s so many blanks to fill in, it’s hard to have a genuine opinion on it.
CO: There were a clutch of teams that could have won this All-Ireland, does it feel like an All-Ireland missed?
JMcG: No, because we weren’t ready to win it. You might say it was an opportunity missed. We played Dublin in that semi-final in ‘11 and Kerry would have been in the final. If we had played Kerry in that final, we would have been annihilated because we weren’t ready to win it. The first year is absolutely crazy. Even coming in as a manager for the second or third time, it makes it a bit easier but not much. It’s still a new group. I knew nothing about those fellas, now I know an awful lot about them. All the other parts are in place. It leaves you in a better position that way. You need to be ready to win it. When I say ready, you need to be ready physically, tactically. We weren’t in ‘11, we’d only half of the jigsaw. And you need to be ready here [pointing to his temple]. You need to believe you can do it. That’s the biggest challenge for the likes of a Donegal. And fair play to Armagh. They won the All-Ireland and you can’t win it without believing you can win it. When a Dublin player wakes up on January 1, they’re not thinking about second place. A Kerry player is not thinking about second place. There’s a sense of entitlement there. ‘Why wouldn’t we win it? Of course this is our year’. Right away, if you’ve a group of fellas that are not sure if they can or they can’t, that don’t have that sense of entitlement or haven’t done enough to prove to themselves. Dublin and Kerry have proved to themselves over and over and over, so it’s an easy sell to the next generation coming along, isn’t it? ‘Of course we believe it, sure we’re just after doing it.’
CO: Do you feel Donegal are right there, waking up on January 1 believing?
JMcG: No I don’t. We’re in a far better place now than they would have been in but I definitely don’t feel that they’re right there. But see if you get everything right, it guarantees you nothing other than that you’re in the fight. There was gaps in us last year and we weren’t ready to win it, but we were in the fight. We came a long way in a short space of time. We won Division Two, we won the Ulster title, massive achievement for them [the players]. The three Division One teams in Ulster, we ended up with the provincial and the other two ended up with a national title, Derry and Armagh. We punched holes in the group stage and the All-Ireland series. If we held our nerve in the last 15 minutes of the Galway game, we could have been in the final. Whether that’s a blessing or not, I don’t know. I’m not bitter or annoyed about it, you’re just stunned after the game because you don’t want the season to end. On reflection, we weren’t ready. If we’re ready this year on all fronts, the only thing it guarantees you is you’re in the fight.
CO: How many times have you watched the Galway game?
JMcG: None.
CO: You haven’t watched it?
JMcG: No.
CO: Why?
JMcG: I don’t need to. I had it watched three times in my mind between Dublin and Donegal, processing every single bit of it.
CO: So what did you process? You mentioned losing your nerve in the last 15 minutes, is that how you would review it?
JMcG: I wouldn’t put it in that context, I don’t even know if I said that.
CO: ‘If we’d held our nerve’, I think you said.
JMcG: Held our nerve, yeah. Basically held our nerve in the context of what we’d done up to that point. We had to just keep on doing what we had done. We missed the first three scores of the game and then we kicked ten points in a half after that. We kicked five in the second half but we had the same amount of chances coming down the stretch as in the first half. A lot of the shots were in good areas, all situations where you’re happy for the boys to have a go. Eoghan Bán [Gallagher]’s injury had a massive impact. It was a double-edged sword. Shane O’Donnell had a brilliant season for us, he’s a talented boy. He was going really well and we made the decision to take him back, but we missed him in the half-forward line. He had played there during the National League so we didn’t pluck it out of thin air. We had picked up a few niggles that week, Conor O’Donnell, Odhran Doherty. We thought the safest thing was to take Shane back and put in a forward. But we missed Shane going that way and we missed Ban coming from deep. I think that had a big impact on our structure in the last. You’d two gaps, one at 10 and one at 7. Those two guys doing those two things might have taken away from that running in the last 15 minutes, where everybody knows their movements and positions, and there were gaps. But all those decisions they made, it was the right people in the right spots.
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BY the time McGuinness left the job in 2014, he had done almost two years as a performance consultant with Celtic.
The road forked right, taking him to China and America, before he looped back around. First it was Sky Sports, then a column in The Irish Times, before the links began.
There were conversations about him joining Down with Conor Laverty the year before the Kilcoo man did eventually take over.
The following winter, McGuinness was a silent partner on Rory Kavanagh’s ticket before the furore over St Eunan’s county final defeat to Naomh Conaill halted the moves. They ended up shoehorning Paddy Carr in. He was gone by the end of the league, leaving Aidan O’Rourke and Paddy Bradley wrestling with the ship’s bow, finding the first patch of dry land they could and gladly stepping off.
What Jim McGuinness inherited was clouded by that one year. Any depth of analysis would have concluded that their 2024 campaign was entirely possible because the squad he was taking on had almost all been involved in several of their six Ulster finals in the eight years running into 2022.
There was an obvious attraction to managing such a group.
McGuinness’s direction of travel had altered again.
Back towards Donegal.
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CO: When you left in 2014 and went down the soccer path full-time, had you parked all this?
JMcG: I did.
CO: Was it something you always thought you’d come back to?
JMcG: Not now, not in that moment. I wasn’t planning on coming back.
CO: The players put on a lot of pressure?
JMcG: And the personal situation as well. I got caught up in a [business] project that I started in the middle of Covid. I wasn’t ready to go back into professional soccer until I boxed that off, or there’d be no point putting three or four years work into it. I’m still caught up in that. A platform that I had in my head. The timing was ok because I knew I would have to give it a couple of years to get out of my head and off my desk. Then the players had a big impact and my own family and the kids, they were very keen that I do.
CO: So the soccer’s not parked either?
JMcG: No. Well, it’s parked for the time being, yeah, but no. Listen, I love a challenge. I like a big project, no matter what it is. I work in two and three and four-year blocks. I think I would disintegrate if I was in an office. It has to be a project and a big one, something that almost consumes me, and then the next one. So yeah, I dunno where I’ll go in the future. Something else could grab your attention and that would be another chapter.
CO: How challenging was the professional soccer environment?
JMcG: Really, really challenging. You’re learning a new sport.
CO: You’d only footered at soccer around home?
JMcG: Aye, I had played a bit. Playing a sport and being involved at elite level are just two ends of the one continuum. It’s a very, very steep climb. Culturally, how things work, the language, expectation levels, organisation, you have to really take a step back and say ‘I’m not gonna go in here and pretend I know things when I don’t know things’. You’re learning all the time. I’m still learning. I watch an awful lot of soccer still, I’ve no choice with the boys. Celtic mad, Liverpool and Real Madrid. Once you go very deep into something, it’s never the same as it was. Most soccer coaches will tell you they don’t watch soccer because they can’t watch a game and enjoy it. They’re stuck into ‘the full-back got caught there, he’s too high, why did he not slipe across, there should be two sixes there instead of one six’. I actually like that, sitting watching like that.
CO: You must have doubts about it all?
JMcG: Of course you do. But Pep Guardiola doubts himself. He’s in a bad run at the minute. I’ve seen many of his interviews down the years where he questions himself, questions the whole thing, questions his philosophy. Moved away from his own philosophy, came back to it, dominated the league after he went back to it, went more German on it coming out of Bayern Munich and then returned to his roots and dominated, because that’s what he knew. Mother Teresa doubted herself on her deathbed, a woman that gave her whole life to other people and God. Doubts, like confidence, sit on a continuum. When things are going well and you’re going well, you’re in a good spot. When things are not going well or someone’s having a go at you or asking questions or challenging you and you don’t have the answer, and the answer would be automatic in another sport, them doubts are gonna be there. Of course they are. But how I see the game now, my game intelligence about it, is a multiple of ten of what it would have been the day before. Coming back and being involved with Derry City at U17 level, U19 level, winning the cup with that team was big in my own head, even though it wasn’t a big thing. But it was big. And beating all the Dublin teams in the process, they’re well stocked with good players, a lot of them have gone on to England and Europe. That’s what you want, those opportunities to challenge yourself. Life takes you in different directions.
CO: If I asked will you still be Donegal manager in, say, 2029, having done six years, do you see yourself as doing that?
JMcG: I don’t see myself as doing that but I wouldn’t write it out. You have to understand where you’re at, where your family’s at, where the group are at.
CO: You speak about Donegal being a project, that you didn’t want to take somebody else’s work and finish it off?
JMcG: It’s not that, it’s that there’s loads of people who could have done it. I had to look at it through the lens of this is a bad situation, can you help? It’s a big ask, it’s a big task, but that’s the kinda stuff you love. You love a big ask and a big project and a big task, so maybe you should think about it. The other thing wouldn’t have excited me as much, because I’d done my time. You’re only going back in to be the Donegal manager. Whereas people were genuinely hurt and annoyed and disappointed. A lot of people in Donegal really, really wanted the thing to get back on track. I was one of those people. But then they started asking me, not just the players. That made the project.
CO: Ten years on from leaving, what’s the difference in you?
JMcG: I don’t think there’s any difference in me.
CO: None?
JMcG: No, I don’t think so. But there’s a massive difference in the players. Massive difference. Different generation, different thought processes, different intensity in their life. Reared on technology, the intensity of that, social media, mental health – all those things are real. You don’t even want to acknowledge them sometimes because you’re coming from that different generation. The last group were a totally different group. This group want information, they want data, want information on themselves. That’s how they engage and interact.
CO: How have you found managing that side of it?
JMcG: I had a good enough schooling on it in the professional world, the intensity of their lives is mega. The professional soccer player at Celtic has ten years to make enough money to do the rest of his life. A lot of them don’t have an education. Some of them forego their education to go into academies at 14 and 15. There’s a very high expectation there, there’s a lot of demands there, a lot of intensity there. Trying to navigate your way through that is not easy, parents and agents have a huge impact. Social media’s there and you could be ruined by a couple of comments. That’s why I just don’t go there, don’t like it, don’t agree with it. It’s way too personal a lot of the time. Everybody’s an expert – well you’re not, like. You just aren’t. Experts are experts for a reason. Everybody’s entitled to their opinion but you’re not an expert. Most people will believe their opinion is the same [weight] as Roy Keane’s but Roy Keane spent his whole life in that dressing room scenario. But the other side of that, attacking people, likes, for a 16-year-old boy or an 18-year-old girl, it’s a different world. You have to be aware of that, because it does have an impact on your group. It’s in the group and you can’t change that. It still took me this year to understand my players.
CO: What drives you?
JMcG: In the Donegal context, it’s simple. It’s your family and your place and your identity. Other things, I dunno. Trying to master something. Trying to climb the ladder in something. Get to a point. If Donegal were beaten narrowly the year before I took over, and the Paddy Carr era didn’t end the way it ended, and they had a decent season, there’s not a hope in hell I’d be the manager. Not a hope in hell.
CO: You turned 52 [last] Sunday. A lot of your thing is energy. If you’re talking about ambitions in soccer and other areas, I’m not saying it will suddenly disappear when you’re 60 but do you look at it as having a timeframe to achieve what you want to achieve?
JMcG: No. I seen Alex Ferguson the Saturday before he retired, I could see his eyes on the camera and still going ‘he still has it, he has that fire burning inside him’. His eyes were dancing and you could see he was still driving things. So, no. 50 per cent of people that are born today will live to be 100. That’s a fact. I don’t think about them things at all. Either somebody will come along and tap you on the shoulder or your body will, one or the other, but it’s not something I think of. I’m totally in denial, still in denial [laughing]. I’m thinking what’s the project like? And what’s the timeline? And am I enjoying it? That’s all I’ve ever done is big projects. I like that, firing yourself into things.
