McGuinness praises Donegal's special feat

GAELIC GAMES:AMONG THE many footnotes to Donegal's Ulster football final victory – a first title in 19 years, a perfect link between past and present for manager Jim McGuinness – was their successful negotiation of all four rounds of the provincial competition.

Armagh had been the only team to manage such a feat in the previous 66 years, when they also came through from the preliminary round in 2005, before winning the quarter-final, semi-final and final – and the Anglo-Celt Cup outright.

Before that, Cavan were the last team to do it, in 1945.

It’s not like Donegal had a soft draw either – they beat both Antrim and Cavan, then defending champions Tyrone, before Sunday’s showdown with Derry – who were equally hungry for an Ulster title having last won in 1998.

It helped make the perfect day for McGuinness, who first broke on to the Donegal team as an 18-year-old during that successful 1992 campaign.

“Well we didn’t mention it to the players at all,” says McGuinness, on the apparent jinx of trying to win Ulster from the preliminary round.

“We were only focused on one game, the final, so it wasn’t really something that was on our radar. We’ve achieved it now, so it’s phenomenal to be the second team in 60 odd years to achieve that. It makes it even more special.”

There’s another footnote to Sunday’s win in that the last time Donegal won the Ulster title, in 1992, they went on to collect their first and only All-Ireland – although McGuinness wasn’t about to read too much into the significance of that.

What is certain, he says, is that winning an Ulster title can only stand to his team in the long term, but in the meantime they won’t be setting any limits on their ambitions for the rest of 2011.

“We don’t like to put pressure on them anyway,” he says. “Winning the game on Sunday was the only thing we were trying to achieve. We weren’t talking about the Ulster final, or the significance of the 19 years.

“We were talking about x, y and z that had to happen if we were going to win the game. Performance goals are a lot more powerful than telling somebody they haven’t achieved in 19 years.

“The other side, from a management point of view, is that you can’t progress until you end up winning an Ulster championship. I don’t feel that you can do anything from the point of view of achieving at the highest level without winning provincial titles.

“Next year when the championship starts we’re defending Ulster champions and we’re going to prepare for that with that title, so we have a different perspective from the start of the season this year.

“The key thing this year was to win one game in the championship and now we’re four games into the championship. It’s a totally different dynamic. That’s what we’re trying to cultivate, that’s what we’re trying to develop. As a man said to me nothing is neutral, you’re either moving forward or you’re moving back.”

So far, for Donegal, 2011 has been all about moving forward – and no other team in the country can say that.

It’s also marks a stark turnaround from 2010, when their disappointing championship run ended with nine-point loss

to Armagh in the first round of the qualifiers, having failed to win an Ulster championship match for the fourth year in succession.

“It’s been a nice journey from that perspective,” says McGuinness. “It’s all down to the players, they’ve worked hard, they’ve knuckled down, because it was the same group of players that came in for an awful lot of criticism.

“We’re just delighted that they got an opportunity to turn that around and to prove to the people of Ulster they are contenders for provincial championships.

“But we’re only on the first few rungs of the ladder in our development and we’re trying to do a number of things that are nowhere near where they should be but we’re moving in the right direction and that’s the journey we’ll continue on now.”

“The key thing this year was to win one game in the championship and now we’re four games into the championship. It’s a totally different dynamic. That’s what we’re trying to cultivate, that’s what we’re trying to develop. As a man said to me nothing is neutral, you’re either moving forward or you’re moving back