Jim McGuinness will do things his way - and he’ll have firm guarantees 

It’s hard to believe that in perhaps Donegal’s greatest time of need, Jim McGuinness has answered the call to manage his county’s senior football team once again. 

Just like our Lord’s second coming, seeing really is believing well, kind of, as the Donegal board tonight finally confirmed the mercurial Glenties man’s return. 

McGuinness is currently on holiday Stateside with his family but his absence from that unveiling didn’t make Monday night’s announcement feel any less spectacular.  

When the first murmurs began to circulate that the 2012 Al-Ireland winner might be about to come back on board it was hard, near impossible in fact, not to brace yourself for what many still felt would inevitably transpire to be yet another letdown. 

The surface might now appear calm in the north west but there is still a deluge of underlying and off-the-field issues in Donegal that need to be sorted out. 

So you have to pose the question, why on earth would McGuinness put his reputation and, in some ways, legacy, on the line here?  

It’s important to remember that McGuinness has a genuine love for Donegal, he really cares. He could easily have ridden off into the sunset after 2012 when the original offer from Dermot Desmond to come on board at Glasgow Celtic was first made. 

Instead, he asked the Billionaire owner if he could initially work part-time in Scotland and continue to be involved with Donegal. That was a serious risk but Desmond okayed it.  He was also prepared to come in, in the background last year, in an advisory capacity, when it looked like Rory Kavanagh was going to succeed Declan Bonner. 

McGuinness is also unique in the sense that his clout is so far-reaching he can probably act independently of the Donegal board; not on all levels of course, but on the majority of the really important ones, most notably financially.

With white smoke appearing over Convoy on Monday night, you can be sure some big Donegal GAA fans, the kind of ones with really deep pockets, will now back McGuinness to the hilt. Whatever Jim’s ambitions cost, in regards to anything his squad and backroom team needs, it’ll be provided. 

Of course, he’ll need to have some dialogue with the board - he won’t be able to completely function without that. But there will be very clear parameters, a buffer even, that communicates between the two. 

Fergus McGee, our county chairman, inherited a serious mess when he took the chair last December. The Academy fallout and the subsequent review by Croke Park into Donegal’s affairs had absolutely nothing to do with him. 

He, as well as the other members of the five-man committee tasked with finding a new senior team boss, deserves serious credit here.  McGee is a good and honourable man and McGuinness will have seen that with his very own eyes over deliberations these past few weeks. 

The irony that a man who once begged to be given the chance to take the helm but was denied three times is now, in fact, the one being begged, won’t be lost on anyone this week. 

But it’s a very different Jim McGuinness that now takes front and centre once more. 

In terms of what he will bring to the mix on the field, this time around, only time will tell. But it will be fun guessing and speculating in the time in between. 

Donegal’s relegation to Division 2 last term felt like a disaster but McGuinness certainly won’t feel that way picking up the baton ahead of 2024. 

What will be fascinating to see will be how he merges his soccer and Gaelic football philosophies. And what even is his Gaelic football ideology a full nine seasons since he last managed at this level? 

Having taken a delve into some old podcasts and reading material the last few days one thing he has frequently mentioned is the ‘Red Bull model’. 

Paraphrasing, it basically uses a templated or macros approach to identifying talent. McGuinness will have a style of play he wants to implement. And after that, it’s about putting his trust in players with the athletic output to carry that out from the first whistle to the last. 

Looking at what’s available to him this time around, there are some players on the periphery of matters that will suddenly feel they’ve the engine to be a firm part of that. There might well be some established lads that suddenly feel vulnerable. 

But the likes of Colm McFadden, Ryan Bradley and Neil Gallagher proved last time out that gains can be made, thresholds and glass ceilings can be broken through if the will and want is there.  

In soccer, that was a 90-plus minute process but for Gaelic, that’ll be tapered to 70.  Speaking back in 2020 on the Modern Soccer Coach podcast, McGuinness gave a little more insight into all of that. 

“Roger Schmidt, the levels I’d seen, the heat in Beijing, I wondered if it was even possible to press the game for 90 minutes. Even now, coaches and players will say it can’t be done. But it was proved to me in Beijing it can be done. 

“If you’re recruiting athletes and people with the right attitude and mentality where you’re aiming to be as dynamic, aggressive and explosive as possible, there really isn’t a ceiling.  

“This is where analytics and GPS data come in. The best model of how all of that is applied is the Red Bull model. I was in New York for a week, and they talk about weapons. Players simply have to have certain weapons. 

“If you don’t have speed and you don’t have power you aren’t going to make it with any of the Red Bull teams.

“We probably didn’t have that with Donegal. We’d a few players that had gotten a lot of criticism for being lazy. 

“But all those same guys eventually become the ones that were actually leading the gameplan over the next four years. So it can be developed if you have the right mentality and approach”.

He added: “We pushed really hard with Donegal but we had the natural days recovery in between. We would have trained Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. But we’d the gaps in between for gym and S&C.   

“But you need a pre-season under the belt. You need to build up that robustness and intensity where it then becomes about maintenance. The games themselves are then brilliant. 

“And if you’re playing a high-pressing game, you’re getting your workouts within the games”.

In terms of just how far you can push all of that, he explained: “Burnout, is that a physical or psychological thing? 

“If the right culture is in place and people are there because they want to be there, I don’t think that’s an issue. There was a lot of stuff out there when I was with Donegal, it was almost as if we’d the whip out at training. 

“That couldn’t have been further from the truth. Don’t get me wrong, we pushed them harder than they were ever pushed. 

“But as we joined the dots between that and what we wanted to do on the pitch; when they saw the trade-off there, they bought into it one hundred percent. Once we were at that point every single night on the training pitch was simply a joy. 

“We’d 30 or so guys and all they wanted to do was empty absolutely everything they had knowing they’d be one or two percent further on because of that. That is an amazing place to be. For me, there is no burnout in that situation. 

“But if it’s negative and you’re negative with the players, they can then become under pressure, under-appreciated and feel like they are being driven into the ground. That can become a psychological burden and maybe then that’s interpreted and feels like ‘burnout’.” 

McGuinness has assembled a vibrant and young backroom team. Neil McGee is right up there with anyone, in terms of influence, when it comes to McGuinness’ previous triumphs with Donegal. 

A three-time All-Star - the Gaoth Dobhair man will bring a standard and even an aura to the side’s new management team. 

Colm McFadden, a former teammate and brother-in-law of McGuinness’, has a season under his belt with Sligo as a forwards coach and that experience will mean he’s ready to now move matters up a notch with his native county. 

Finally, Luke Barrett has served a brilliant apprenticeship with Donegal minors and McGuinness will feel he can mold the Milford man for perhaps bigger and better things down the line. 

No one does box office, good and bad, quite like Donegal GAA. But this evening’s developments might well top anything that’s ever gone before.