Last Sunday evening, with Jones’s Road still bathed in the warmth of a late summer’s evening where every conversation was lifted by the wonder of what had just unfolded next door, Donegal’s Paddy McGrath was cornered by a horseshoe of dictaphones under the Hogan stand where the cold draughts keep the security people swaddled in anoraks. In this cold place, every question tried to recapture the glorious heat of the day. Every Donegal player knew what everyone else wanted to know: how they did it? Who said what? Where did the coup of the decade find its roots? “It went to plan,” replied McGrath.
Like everything that went before Donegal were controlled, measured and mean on detail. The players deflected and happily stayed in the grey non-speak of the post-match press conference, but the most fundamental answers had been clearly visible on the field. There was nothing radical about the game plan that beat Dublin. Before the match Jim McGuinness’s bullet points were simple and familiar: stop Dublin from scoring goals at all costs, keep them shooting from distance. Dublin would hit monstrous points, McGuinness told the players, but they wouldn’t kick them all day.
Donegal tried to stop Dublin opening their defence up by covering specified zones inside the 45-metre line. Donegal got their match-ups correct and slowed Dublin down whenever they could. They won enough of their own kickouts and reduced plenty of the rest to a 50-50 contest. Once they got their third goal Donegal curled up like a hedgehog and preserved their energy for mugging Dublin in the scoring zone and filching the odd turnover. When Dublin lost the ball, Donegal returned to the brilliantly selfless breakout formula of 2012, attacking in small cells of three and four players. Because Dublin pressed so high up the field Donegal often found themselves in open country heading for the Dublin goal. Once they held their line and broke Dublin’s, everything was how they were told it would be.
That faith in McGuinness had nourished the players all the way to last Sunday. Michael Murphy opened his new sports shop a couple of weeks ago and happily professed his total belief to any visitors in what was scheduled to unfold the following Sunday. When the team gathered in Johnstown House the weekend before to sharpen their minds, Rory Kavanagh was released to a wedding in Cavan that Friday night. Karl Lacey landed later in the weekend after the birth of his son Noah.
The players were happy. There was a freedom in their play and the mood in the camp. For all the challenges laid down by Dublin, the game plan to beat them resonated with elements of every plan that brought Donegal success before. Everything McGuinness said after the game was underpinned by two themes: total honesty and total trust. That’s what earned Donegal their win. That’s all the public needed to know.
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Was it Donbackgal’s greatest performance under McGuinness? Only beating Cork in the 2012 All-Ireland semi-final offered a better exposition of what has transformed Donegal in the last three years. Reaching the levels to make such an unforgiving system work when their stocks of energy appeared to be dwindling also gave this win a different quality. When Donegal’s style has been analysed before, everything was sourced to their tireless willingness to track up and down the field, making runs that might never be spotted and covering spaces the opposition might never think to exploit.
Their economy in the tackle is matched on their best days by their shooting accuracy and patience to hold the ball for the right pass. For all Dublin’s pressing last Sunday they only ended the first half with four shots more on goal than Donegal. In the second half Donegal kicked 10 shots to Dublin’s 19, and outscored them 2-6 to 0-7.
No one doubted Donegal’s system. Everyone doubted their ability to execute again at such a high level. Once they did, every flaw in Dublin’s season: their lack of quality games since April, their failure to convert more than 60% of their chances — last week they got 17 scores from 37 attempts — and their struggle to find a holding centre-back in Ger Brennan’s absence, exploded in their faces.
Watching them unravel into the final 10 minutes, shooting panicky shots from poor angles and long distances when a few points could have reeled Donegal back within reach and helplessly making runs and flinging handpasses down cul-de-sacs on the outer limits of the Donegal defence recalled every other team to melt down in the face of Donegal’s unstinting commitment.
The players’ faith last Sunday echoed so many other days that unfolded to the dimensions sketched out for the players by McGuinness. When Donegal played Cork in 2012, the accuracy of McGuinness’s prophecies about how Cork would play had his players recalling his predictions for months after like a Derren Brown audience. Last Sunday hinted at a similar sense of destiny, but they will also see their success was finely balanced.
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Although Donegal focused everything on preventing goals, Dublin should have scored two before the game got away from them. Donegal only kicked six wides but let four easy chances slip. They lost two key players — Neil McGee and McGrath — to black cards without shipping any damage. Donegal were overrun for the first 20 minutes, but used Dublin’s misses and Christy Toye’s introduction to run at Dublin, turn the heat up everywhere and force Dublin to concede chances.
Donegal have the system to win it all. They might now have the players, but against that and every assumption already being made about the final is the biggest lesson of all from last Sunday: nothing is sure. Nothing is certain. What delivered a coup for the ages last week mightn’t win an All-Ireland. That’s what made last weekend such a joy, and the next two weeks something to savour.