Jim McGuinness: GAA offers a great distraction after return from the US

If you had told me a few months ago that I’d wake up on Halloween morning in Thurles, I wouldn’t have believed you. At the very least I’d have wondered just how much more weird 2020 could get. But I’m happy to be here, heading to the television studio for today’s lunchtime match between Monaghan and Cavan. And then I’ll be high-tailing it home to Donegal, under lockdown, to watch a Sunday rivalry which has occupied a good many of my waking hours down the years.

You may or not know that our family has spent the last couple of years living in Charlotte in North Carolina. I took up a job there in early 2019 coaching the city’s soccer team. While that position ended before I’d have wished, we were very happy living there and had planned on staying over the next year. But the uncertainty over the pandemic and the closure of the schools for what may turn out to be a full academic year changed our thought process. We ended up leaving fairly quickly and returned to Donegal in late summer: it’s natural to be drawn to home in a crisis anyway.

So there was a very sudden change in location. It was lovely being back home, seeing family and friends again and the county in gorgeous weather and watching the tail-end of the club championships. But I suppose emotionally we were still drawing breath after what was a fabulous life experience and we all remain caught up in the intrigue and tension of the upcoming US election, which dominated day-to-day conversations in Charlotte for quite some time.

Republican state

Like many Irish people, I’d previously experienced America through the prism of the Irish-flavoured strongholds in Boston, Philly and New York. But there is a clear distinction between living in America and living in the American south.

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North Carolina is a traditional Republican state now facing the prospect of turning blue. And what struck me after the pandemic began to sweep through the United States was how quickly people’s response to its threat tended to fall into line with their political views. If you were going to the ‘store’ to pick up groceries, you could nearly tell Republican and Democrat apart by the attitude towards mask-wearing. The mask issue is very much tied up in the suppression or right to civil and individual liberty. That may not have happened, to my mind, if the government had been straight out of the traps with clarity of message. There was a sense in the beginning that people craved a unified message. Nobody knew anything about the virus – initially everyone wore gloves, not masks. Then both. Then masks. But with no clear governmental message, people took up entrenched positions and the instruction to wear masks became associated with individual rights, which is a core tenet of American culture and citizenship anyhow. So it became an issue based on Red and Blue dynamics.

And you did feel that you were living through a particular moment in America: that the country was in the midst of a profound shift. Politics was foremost in daily conversations. Our next door neighbours were an African-American family recently moved from Brooklyn. We met up fairly regularly and what was striking was the conversations they were having with their kids on how they walked and talked and carried themselves out in the world were very much different to the conversations we were having with our kids within our household. Things we would take for granted and not even think about, they were paying a lot of attention to. I found that the biggest education of all.

Protest and unrest

Right now, we all still watch American news shows to stay in touch with the issues. We had a chance to travel quite a bit there and discover some of the historical sites and issues that became relevant – and prevalent – again during the summer of protest and unrest. One of the visits that made the strongest impression on me was to McLean House at Appomattox in Virginia where the terms of surrender in the US civil war were signed. It is powerful to think that four years of fighting was reduced to the agreement in this one livingroom where we stood with other tourists – and to think that the country is still living with the ramifications of that agreement. But the experience means that there is incredible interest in our house to see how North Carolina and indeed America ‘goes’ in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

It highlights the fact that Gaelic games are a great escape from real life. And I suppose it would be a cold day in hell before you’d get the Tyrone and Donegal lads sitting around a table in Appomattox. What a game to have on the first weekend of the championship!

It’s funny that, although this schedule has been forced upon the GAA by a dire international emergency, it shows what is possible. A streamlined championship, with brilliant games coming thick and fast, and the all or nothing element of knockout all make this a unique competition. The empty stadia underline the fact that we are living in a time of huge restrictions: just being able to play these games is a huge privilege for the teams but also, I think, a hugely commendable undertaking by them. They are, after all, amateur.

There is no doubt it is a completely different championship. It asks different questions of teams. What I found interesting about the club championship was that a lot of teams won their county title for the first time in a long time. Clearly, some teams doubled down and saw an opportunity. I think that will be reflected in the All-Ireland. The teams that managed lockdown best will be well-placed to profit. Then we have the weather variables. Winter football makes this an entirely different competition.

There is the intrigue of the knockout system. It takes me back to my own playing days. You had this crazy dynamic where players were cooped up for six to nine months waiting on that all or nothing game. There were so many people sent off in those games because of that. You were hot under the collar because there was no tomorrow. Hits were ill-timed and, because the ball was kicked a lot more, there were a lot more 50-50 challenges and players going in full throttle. The old mantra was “hit hard and hit often.” The game is more conservative now and about possession football.

I am intrigued to see if anyone breaks out of the mould of play established by Dublin. Under Jim Gavin, Dublin decided that attacking football was the way to win All-Irelands and then gradually morphed into a possession-based model of attacking football while continuing to dominate. It was an amazing achievement. Dublin have set the template. And other teams have adopted it. So will any team now come up with something slightly different to that system? Or will Dessie Farrell change things up? If that happens then you are having a different conversation over the next few weeks. I look at Dublin and Dessie Farrell: they are going for six-in-a-row but it is Dessie’s first year. And in that first season there are so many elements to pull together and you have to find a rhythm. And that has been interrupted by the lockdown. It will be fascinating to see what they unveil in championship football.

Orchestral

I feel that Gaelic football is a game now played in moments. It is not the game it was in that regard. It is not relentless anymore: the ball goes upfield and is lost, downfield and is lost, bomb back upfield, a point or a wide, a kick out and the whole thing starts again. It is orchestral now: lulls and crescendos. Teams excel at keeping possession. For me, the transitional counter-attack has diminished in recent seasons. So that quick-slow tempo is what I expect on Sunday in Ballybofey.

I think Darragh Cavanan and Conor McKenna bring something different to Tyrone. I watched their league game against Donegal and they weren’t really dialled in. Donegal have beaten Tyrone consistently and yet they lost the big one last summer in the Super 8s. I do think Donegal have the edge here - I think it is hard to force Shuan Patton long on the kickout and at the end of that food chain for Donegal, whether it is Michael (Murphy) or Patrick (McBrearty) or Jamie Brennan or runners from deep, they have a lot of options to keep that scoreboard ticking.

But this is a strange championship and it is an empty house on Halloween weekend in Ballybofey. It’s not quite the lion’s den of high summer. Whoever copes with all of that will profit, too.

Someone asked me not so long ago if people will actually care about this championship and is there much interest in it in Donegal. And it is a very good question because it is so hard to gauge. Everyone is at home in their own wee bubble. But to my mind, there has possibly never been a more important championship. It’s a glimmer of brightness and escape from a very arduous year for us all.

I know I’ll be glued to the television and expect that the same will be true in households all around the country. Everyone is forced apart by this horrible virus. But at least these games give us a chance to be on the same wavelength for a few hours. Fingers crossed the same will be true after the election count in the US.