What Patrick McBrearty achieved for Donegal is simply amazing - Jim McGuinness 

Jim McGuinness says Patrick McBrearty did everything he possibly could to keep the curtain from falling prematurely on his Donegal football career. 

McBrearty recently opted to retire from the inter-county set-up on medical advice, given the sustained recurrence of a knee injury.

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The Kilcar clubman is the county’s only seven-time Ulster SFC winner and was the youngest member, at 19, of Jim McGuinness’s All-Ireland winning panel of 2012 when he started at corner-forward. 

McGuinness, in his first-ever championship match as manager against Antrim in the Ulster preliminary round of 2011, gave McBrearty, who had played minors that same afternoon in Ballybofey, his first Donegal senior appearance. He would end up scoring 15 goals and 465 points for Donegal.

Speaking for the first time on that huge departure, the Donegal boss says the former Donegal captain did as much as he could to remain on board. 

“Paddy - he’s been immense for Donegal and we wish him well in retirement,” McGuiness said after his side’s 1-15 to 0-7 Dr McKenna Cuo win over Antrim. “It’s unfortunate. We communicated a lot in the off-season. 

“We tried to do as much as we could. We took it to the absolute nth to see could we find a solution for him. Really, it was a medical decision in the end and it’s so disappointing as I know Paddy would have loved to have given it another rattle. 

“These things happen in football and that’s the hard part. But if you can take a step back from that and just think about what he did achieve, it’s been amazing. 

“He was just so young going in there. And that can take a toll too at some stage. He’s the most decorated player in the county which is a huge achievement. 

“He’s had a good innings but, at the same time, he did everything he could to carry on”.