In January of last year we played Donegal in a pre-National League challenge game. In the normal run of those early-season matches, the ground is soft, the rain is heavy, the wind is cold, the sky is grey. With the league on the horizon young lads are trying to make an impression while some older fellas not long back in training are mostly trying not to be noticed.
The games are rarely memorable. Occasionally you might not even know who won the match. But not for that game against Donegal.
Dublin were actually moving pretty well at the time and we had a decent bank of training done, so for us it was no surprise that we won. But we were a little surprised by what Donegal offered. We came away feeling they were going to struggle in the league and sure enough several weeks later they got relegated from Division One.
We didn’t come across them again last season. They lost to Down in an Ulster quarter-final and ultimately exited the championship after losing at home to Tyrone in an All-Ireland preliminary quarter-final.
But by Sunday evening Donegal could be planning for an All-Ireland final appearance. It’s an incredible turnaround in such a short space of time – and the obvious difference is that the man in charge is now Jim McGuinness.
I couldn’t say I know Jim or that I would have spent time in his company but it is fair to say that during his first term as Donegal manager he would have left his mark on our Dublin squad.
In life and sport you learn most from your losses. In the summer of 2014 we were playing great football, it was an exciting brand of football that was easy on the eye. But in the All-Ireland semi-final against Donegal that August we were undone defensively. We pushed up a little too high on kickouts and got caught by Paul Durcan going long over the press. Donegal were able to get flick-ons and burst straight through on our goal.
After taking the lessons from that game I don’t think we were ever as exposed down the middle again. There was an emphasis on blocking up defensive channels. We knew we had the firepower to win games but we also realised every game didn’t have to be a shoot-out. We learned a lot from that defeat to Donegal.
I’m not surprised Jim has got a bounce from Donegal this year, but few would have predicted they’d find themselves on the verge of a first All-Ireland final appearance in a decade.
Donegal had fallen so far back that they needed a unifying figure to come in and light a spark. It is clear Jim is an inspirational person in the county, and immediately he had the goodwill of the players and supporters. Playing in Division Two this season probably helped Donegal generate some momentum as well.
He has also assembled a really strong management team around him – including the likes of Neil McGee and Colm McFadden – all proud Donegal men driving towards a common goal. It looks like Donegal targeted certain big games to win and again those victories fuelled the momentum.
I have often heard Jim in interviews referencing “standards” and how it’s about players showing up in every training session. I’d imagine they train at a really high intensity, which in turn allows them to play at a high intensity. You play the way you train!
When we were training really well that usually translated the following weekend to us delivering a strong performance. You don’t settle for mediocre, you set high standards, and when that brings results the entire group buys in.
Donegal won the Division Two league title this year and also claimed the Ulster title, all of which demonstrates to the group that all of the hard work is paying off. It looks like he has the players eating out of his hands.
Donegal’s game is based on running and having footballers happy and comfortable to play anywhere on the pitch. It makes them a hard team to play against, but they are coming up against a formidable challenge in Galway on Sunday.
How will Donegal go about it? I think they’ll try hammer the hammer. They will have looked at the Galway full-forward line of Damien Comer, Shane Walsh and Robert Finnerty. Donegal will ask them to run from one 13m line to the other as often as possible. All those players have had their injury issues this season and there are questions over their fitness, so Brendan McCole and the other Donegal defenders will take off up the field every chance they get and pose a dilemma for the Galway forwards – stick or twist?
If Comer, Walsh or Finnerty don’t follow their man Donegal will have a plus one in attack and they are brilliant at taking advantage of having that extra player. But if the Galway forwards are continually having to track back and then get down the field again not only will they be away from the scoring zone for periods of the game but they’ll be emptying the tank doing that work.
Donegal don’t tend to just play the ball around inside their own half or in the middle of the field, they prefer instead to get as many numbers inside the opposition 45 as possible.
That lends itself to a 15 v 15 in a very tight space, and even if they lose the ball it is very hard for the opposition to transition out against them. That’s where Donegal will try wrestle control, they’ll strive to play the game inside Galway’s 45 metre line.
Donegal have had a great spread of scorers all year – the likes of Peadar Mogan and Ryan McHugh driving forward from deep. A concern for them has to be their concession rate at the other end of the field, but it seems Donegal almost go out with the belief they will outscore the opposition.
Galway have to decide what they will do on Shaun Patton’s kickouts too. I don’t think they will press early on because they know if they get caught too high up the field then Patton has the distance to kick over the press and leave them exposed.
So I think we’ll see a game of tennis essentially early on, with both teams sitting outside the 45s and allowing the opposition to have the ball – a case of you defend, we defend.
The danger for Galway is that should they fall four or five points down a predicament could develop which forces them to push up on more kickouts as the game develops – that’s when Donegal are capable of delivering killer blows.
It has been quite a season for Donegal already, and it might just have a couple of weeks to run yet.
