Donegal bids a fond farewells to Mister Consistency, Paddy McGrath

Paddy McGrath, a five-time Ulster SFC and All-Ireland champion with Donegal this week announced his inter-county retirement. Chris McNulty speaks to Mark McHugh and Stephen McCahill about Donegal’s exceptional corner-back

Paddy McGrath’s retirement from inter-county football closed the door on one of the most consistent careers.

From 2010-2018, McGrath played in 43 consecutive championship games. He leaves the inter-county stage with an All-Ireland and five Ulster titles. Mark McHugh first played with McGrath on the Donegal Under-21s and transitioned to the senior squad at the same time.

“The biggest compliment I can give him is that he was the man you didn’t want to mark in training,” says McHugh.

“I know even when we came to senior teams in the clubs and we’d have played Ardara, Paddy was tasked with marking me. It was a hard battle to get the upper hand in. If you were inside, you’d try to run around, maybe take him out the field to get on the ball.

“If you were one-on-one, you’d rarely get the upper hand. He trained at the same level that he played. That’s very hard to get across to people that you have to train like that, but all the men he marked at senior level for Donegal, rarely was he second best. He was always tasked with some of the headrest jobs and he always rose to the challenge.”

McHugh has moved into coaching and often uses McGrath as a reference point. As an example. Of what to be and who to be.

“He became a warrior on the pitch,” McHugh says. “There wasn’t an inch given. He had a pure competitive nature. If it was a game or training, Paddy wanted to be the best. Two things you didn’t want in that Donegal squad: You didn’t want to mark Paddy McGrath in training and you didn’t want to be next to him in the gym.

“He led runs out from the front and was a massive help to any young man coming in. A lot of Donegal players trained at the level Jim McGuinness installed in him.

“I’ve heard Michael Murphy speak a lot about consistency. Some players can have great games and the next day they’re not seen or they go to training and their levels drop. With Paddy it was a pure consistent level - and that was the level he played at with Donegal.”

Stephen McCahill encountered Paddy McGrath for the first time when he was working with Ardara’s under-8s. For the best part of a decade, McCahill watched McGrath’s development at close quarters.

“He was very small at underage, but by God he was a terrier,” McCahill says. “He won us games that we never should’ve won. Paddy was the safe pair of hands. He motivated everyone at all times. Paddy was an exceptional player who inspired everyone.”

Jim McGuinness, in his autobiography, ‘Until Victory Always’, delivered the ultimate compliment to McGrath, who he said ‘came to embody everything the team was about’.

McGrath – who played 118 times, including 58 in the Championship – won an All-Ireland in 2012 and lifted three Ulster SFCs under McGuinness, starting every Championship game in that fabled period.

McGrath is built from tough granite and the Loughros Point native endeared himself to McGuinness during Donegal’s run to the All-Ireland U21 final in 2010.

McGrath broke his jaw in the semi-final win over Tipperary. Most men would have been ruled out of the final against Dublin. Paddy McGrath wasn’t most men.

McGuinness recounts the trip to Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry in his book: “It’s a common trip for footballers: if you break your jaw in Donegal, you get it wired in Derry… I told him ‘You’re going to be a huge loss to us but we have to just focus now on getting ready and back to it.’

“Paddy doesn’t blink. ‘I’m playing that game, Jim,’ he says to me. And he is so adamant about it that I start laughing.

“He’s eyeballing me, daring me to contradict him. ‘Paddy, you have a broken jaw. And I’ve a duty of care to you. We can’t be reckless here. There is more to life than football’.”

The exchange between McGrath and his surgeon is now the stuff of legend, the doctor telling McGrath that it would be ‘dangerous’ to play.

‘Yeah, but what’s the worst that could happen?’

‘Well, obviously, the worst that could happen is that you break it again.’

‘And if I break it again will you fix it again?’

‘Yes I will, Paddy.’

The surgeon removed two teeth, inserted a steel plate in his jaw and, in the opening moments of the final against Dublin, McGrath tore into a loose ball and ‘threw himself on it head first’, as he later remembered.

On the side-line at Breffni Park, McGuinness turned to Peter McGinley: ‘He’s going to be fine’.

Earlier in 2010, McGrath turned down an offer to work full-time with a contractor in Liverpool. He was on work placement and the offer of a position as an assistant site manager was on the table.

The commute, as he had been doing for Ardara and the Donegal Under 21s, couldn’t keep going indefinitely. The job offer coincided with the announcement of a new manager for the Donegal senior team.

“I knew that Jim could take the team somewhere,” McGrath said later. “You hear about all these boys who are away enjoying the good life and making loads of money, but it all depends on your own situation.”

McGrath made his first Donegal appearance as a sub in an Ulster Championship loss to Down in 2010, while his first start arrived in Donegal’s next game, an infamous qualifier loss to Armagh in Crossmaglen.

Hooked by John Joe Doherty, the then Donegal manager, in the first half after a roasting from Jamie Clarke, who scored 2-2, McGrath’s confidence was surely hit for six. Armagh won by nine.

“What happened to Paddy in Cross’, a lot of players wouldn’t have recovered from,” McHugh says. “In fact, they’d have hidden. That summer, Paddy put it to the back of his mind and it sort of drove him to become the player that he was. Paddy was always one of the first players on the team sheet and he was usually given the hardest jobs. He’s one of the great Donegal players.”

McGrath was an integral part of the All-Ireland winning Donegal team in 2012. The homecoming to Ardara stirred emotions of all sorts, as 2012 had been a tough year in Ardara after Martina Maguire, who would’ve been 17 the day McGrath carried the Sam Maguire Cup into his home town, died of cancer in January. Five months later, her cousin, 24-year-old Tomás Maguire, who was offered a place on McGuinness’s panel, was killed in Australia. McGrath was Maguire’s closest friend.

Tomás Maguire brought a Brazilian flag to the 2011 Ulster final. The night of the homecoming, McGrath was draped in an Ardara flag. He later placed Sam on his friend’s grave. McGrath is intensely proud of his area and the feeling is mutual.

“We couldn’t have had a better representative on that team,” McCahill says. “We were always proud of Paddy and we always will be.

“Paddy has unbelievably great respect for people. He respected all his managers and coaches that he worked with, he never showed any differentiation and one thing that stood out for me was that he always respected the opposition, even as a young fella.

“Paddy was a lovely person all through the years. He became quite a good speaker, but in the younger years he did his talking by his performances. Fellas were bigger and stronger, but Paddy could match the best of them. He always had it in him.”

In 2013, Eamon McNelis recalled the moment from maybe a decade beforehand when he knocked on a door at Loughros Point while on a recruitment drive for the Ardara underage team, only to be met with resistance when he tried to enlist the services of a shy young boy who was content to just spectate.

McNelis needed numbers and knew his subject had a bit of talent. There was no obvious Gaelic football history in the family, but there had been something that made the Ardara under-10 manager of the time determined to get agreement.

“He didn’t think he was any good and he didn’t want to go to training,” McNelis said.

“There were neighbours of Paddy’s going and we’d have been telling him that he’d be left behind. We said we’d pick him up and leave him back home again after. If he didn’t like it, well fair enough, but he wasn’t up and down all that long before he was loving it.

“It came so naturally to him. Paddy was one of those boys who had an interest in watching football or listening about it, but that was as far as it went. When he started to mix in with the other boys, he was flying.

“As it turned out, we used to have a competition at the time. We had one every year for the under-10s. It was a Parish League and, sure enough, didn’t Paddy end up eventually captaining one of the teams and winning the thing. It was like he’d won the All-Ireland itself. Little did we know then . . .”

McGrath has always been known for his competitive edge with McGuinness referencing one training-ground war with Murphy: ‘Michael and Paddy McGrath sparked one night and there is a big disparity in size between the two boys, but Paddy wouldn’t yield an inch.’

“We have a statement around here,” McCahill says. ‘There is only one Paddy McGrath. And so there is.”