Brian McEniff confident Jim McGuinness will return

Brian McEniff, the only other man to guide Donegal to the All-Ireland football title, believes Jim McGuinness will return for a fifth year as manager.

"I feel confident he might stay on with Donegal," McEniff told The Irish Times yesterday. "I feel it in my bones. There is unfinished business there. If we had won the All-Ireland I think it would have been harder for him not to go. He built a team that came up just short in the All-Ireland final, that peaked against Dublin. But we are still a good side. We never became a bad side."

“People in this county love him and that’s a great motivating factor.”

That said, there are several reasons why McGuinness could step aside. Key figures in the Donegal team – Éamonn McGee, Karl Lacey, Paul Durcan, Neil Gallagher, Christy Toye, Colm McFadden and Rory Kavanagh – will be the wrong side of 30 while his role with Celtic demands most of his time. There is also the constant travel from Glasgow to Donegal to consider along with raising a young family.

“I would like Jim to stay but I appreciate he has a commitment there at Celtic Park,” McEniff continued. “They are paying his salary, which is important as in the GAA he won’t be getting a lot of money . . .

“It is the love of his county that keeps him motivated but I don’t know if he can sustain it with five small children under the age of eight. It’s a big decision so he needs time out to make it. We are all hoping, keeping our fingers crossed that he will stay on.

“It is a big call but he has done it before,” said McEniff in relation to the aftermath of last year’s heavy defeat to Mayo when captain Michael Murphy corralled the players into lobbying McGuinness to return.

“Jim will do whatever he needs to do. If he does stay he will make demands of all the players that he believes are necessary for them to succeed.”

Demands

This also applies to the demands placed upon his best players by club fixtures, something McEniff feels proved detrimental to Donegal in 2013.

“The bedrock of the GAA is the club but I felt at the start of this year Jim should have been given the space to do what he could do. In doing that I knew I was going against my own better judgement. As a result we are now in a situation over the next couple of weeks that we are going to play-off a lot of club championship matches.

“When we are did that two years ago Karl Lacey picked up an injury after his club [Four Masters] was involved in two draws in the run in.”

“Karl suffered greatly last year – as did Michael Murphy – and it wasn’t just the tiredness from the success of 2012, it is very hard to put back to backs, as the Dubs found out again this year. But it’s something I would fear for over the next couple of weeks; that players will pick up injuries from tiredness . . . ”