Reformed party boys only getting started

“THEY HAD a name for being ‘Party Boys’ and we’re going to let them be party boys now for a few days, going to let them enjoy it and then we’ll refocus after that but nothing will change.”

Jim McGuinness will have seen last night that everything has changed. Forever. He will have noticed as soon as the team bus crawled over the Border at Fermanagh into the wee town of Pettigo.

The embers of their last All-Ireland success in 1992 were aflame once again. And this Donegal team have an age profile that lets them look at what the Kilkennys, Kerrys and Tyrones of this world have achieved.

Now Donegal can aspire to greatness.

McGuinness had the benefit of promoting his under-21 team that just lost a nail-biting All-Ireland final to Dublin.

Michael Murphy was the soul of that team too.

September 23rd was merely D- Day; November 6th, 2010, will be seen as the day the seeds of change were planted in the soil of these Donegal minds.

It happened at Rosapenna Golf Club, way up in the Downings, a Gaeltacht village on the Rosguill peninsula. This is deep, deep Donegal terrain. Next stop the North Atlantic. Then Iceland.

There sat the party boys. And the under-21s. Two completely different mentalities.

Or so it seemed. Veterans like Karl Lacey, Neil Gallagher and Rory Kavanagh were there. Men who had slaved at the coal face for years with occasional sorties for summer days in Croke Park or Clones. Days that usually ended in ruin and regret. And a party. And consequences.

“Our very first meeting . . . McGuinness recalled, speaking yesterday morning in Dublin’s Burlington hotel, “I remember there was an article in the Irish News, called ‘The State of the Nation’, and I opened it up, it was a two-page spread and we were rated 19th in the country and I just held it up and said to the boys: ‘I want your opinion as to why you feel we’re 19th in the country?’

“That was a very poignant moment for the group, I feel, a lot of honesty came out of that moment.

“We broke them into groups of six and seven, they spent 20 minutes on it and there was a lot of home truths.

“They identified the fact that they weren’t fully honest with themselves, that they didn’t do the hard graft, they were cutting corners on gym work, they weren’t putting in the hard yards and it was a great moment, I felt.

“And it came from themselves as well, which is very important.”

That was only the morning gathering. Stranded in splendid isolation, there was no-where else to go.

“After lunch we had another session in relation to “how do we get to number one?”

“They sat down and talked about what it was going to take, how they were going to live their life, the training, their attitude towards training and all those things came into play.

“Now here we are two years later and we are number one. And they have done that, not the management; they have done that because if they didn’t move and change from where they were at and identify what they wanted to do with their own football career we wouldn’t have got from 19th to number one. For me that is a fantastic journey to be part of, that is very satisfying.”

In two years a Herculean leap has occurred. McGuinness saw a 40 per cent improvement from defeat to Dublin in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final to now.

He actually felt they “plateaued” against Mayo on Sunday and that maybe there is another 10 per cent improvement to be made.

“I’d look to the likes of Kilkenny and teams like that that are there year in, year out. The hunger’s there every year, the determination’s there every year and the desire to achieve is there every year and that’s the kind of benchmarks you’d be looking at from a young squad and moving forward.

“It’s intrinsic, it comes from the players themselves and at the moment they want it, they’re hungry for it, and as long as they’re enjoying it and they want to continue it then they’ll be okay.

“Time will tell whether that’s there over the winter and the spring of next year and all the other teams will be upping their ante as well so there’s no guarantees in football.

“We’re delighted to have this one, we’ll be going out to move forward but we’re very pragmatic and know everyone else will be trying to up the ante as well. We’re part of a group of eight to nine teams that want success at a national level and, even saying that, we feel we’re in a privileged position to be in that place.”

But they aren’t in that place. They are up home reminding poor old Sam Maguire how to party like it’s 1992 all over again.

FINAL THOUGHTS

JIM MCGUINNESS ON . . .

. . . The championship structure

“I think it’s a good championship. But I’d have my own opinions on things. It’s a different ball game coming out of Munster or Connacht in contrast to the preliminary round in Ulster.

“You’ve four tough games in Ulster and maybe Leinster, and there’s maybe some handy games in those other provinces. You can slip into a quarter-final fairly easily.

I think the provincial championship could be retained in all its glory but it could then add into the All-Ireland series and the All-Ireland series could be opened up into a 34-team open championship.

“Let everybody at it then. It would be more transparent. But I love the Ulster championship. I think there is a place for both.”

. . . The Football Review Board

“I think it was Declan Darcy on the radio made the comment that the review was set up on foot of our game with Dublin last year. It was a wee bit staggering, to be honest with you; a whole consultation process at national level could be based on one game.

We had a gameplan, we felt we were early in our development and we weren’t ready to take Dublin on. We felt it was the best way of winning the match.

To get a review set up on foot of it is a wee bit over the top, the reaction to it. Whatever the rule changes are, we’re coaches and we’ll coach to the rules.”

. . . Kieran McGeeney

“We’ve achieved our objective and it’s very, very satisfying. There was no guarantee we were going to achieve it within four, six or eight years.

“Kieran McGeeney has done phenomenal work, in my belief, but still hasn’t got the success for the efforts the Kildare players have put in, so it’s very fluid. A lot of things have to happen.”