Jim McGuinness hails new Donegal depth as All-Ireland final looms

When Donegal lost the 2024 All-Ireland semi-final to Galway, Jim McGuinness said the plans for bouncing  back would begin on the bus home.

The long road seemed to have added miles that night as the Donegal coach snaked back up the N3.

Already, McGuinness was thinking ahead.

On Sunday, the fruits of those plans hatched one of Donegal’s great Croke Park hours. 

A 20-point semi-final win over Meath sends Donegal hurtling into an All-Ireland final showdown with Kerry and McGuinness wasn’t surprised at the show his side put on.

“We spoke, as coaches, in the hotel this morning and it felt as if there was performance in them,” he said after the 3-26 to 0-15 win. 

“A lot of the things that we were looking to achieve in the game, there was a consistency in the training. That was brilliant.

“We knew we had trained well.

“In a one-week turnaround, you’re going to get one session done. With the two weeks, you’ll get five or six and that’s massive from a coaching point of view and trying to get the information pulled together and get out to repeatedly work on things on the pitch. 

“That is huge and we got that opportunity to work on things, make some tweaks and build.

“We get another two weeks now for the final and hopefully we can go down the same road.”

When McGuinness and his backroom team sat down to digest the defeat by Galway, exactly 52 weeks ago, they came to the conclusion that they needed more bodies.

Over the autumn months, Michael Murphy was approached and approached some more before committing to the cause again. 

Others, like Odhrán McFadden-Ferry, Eoin McHugh and Eoghan McGettigan rejoined while teenage defender Finnbarr Roarty was of an age to play.  

“It was a long road, back, a hell of a long road back, but we’re delighted to get over the line and obviously go one step further than last year,” McGuinness said. 

“The number one thing on the list is depth. We didn’t know at that stage about the rule changes that were coming down the line and the physical demands of the rules, but certainly we knew that we needed people to come in and give us more depth. 

“We knew that we needed to be stronger and it would built its own energy in the group because people will be competitive and want to play. 

“We saw that today because we were able to make those changes through the game.”

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Roarty won a superb turnover, brought about by sheer determination, to help set up Ciaran Moore’s goal with Oisin Gallen and Conor O’Donnell also scoring goals. 

McGuinness said: “There is a good bit of commentary about how we play sometimes. Maybe it is a wee bit different than other teams, but that’s who we are. 

“We know what we want to do and it’s been in our blood for a long, long time and we just want to tap into that.

“Finnbarr turned that one over, it was a brilliant turnover and we got up the pitch and made it count. That was very encouraging. 

“We felt that if we kept trusting ourselves that we could get into more goalscoring opportunities - and that’s the way it panned out.”