Finding the January groove and not the blues

Seeing the last Christmas or two were a little more muted than had been the norm, people are slowly coming to terms with the notion that January ain’t all bad.

Certainly in football, where the Dr McKenna Cup swings into gear and on the month’s last weekend, the Allianz Football League starts.

For a player in years gone by, the Dr McKenna Cup, Ulster’s curtain-raiser, provided an indication of where you were at. Without naming names, plenty can recall seeing men in county jerseys puffing their cheeks with their hands on their hips not long after the match referee had thrown the ball into the chilly January air after rubbing his hands to keep them warm.

Nowadays, with Gaelic footballers of most levels supposed to live the life of Premier League footballers, it’s certainly changed. More experienced players are much more embedded in line-ups, with the whistle-snappers, keen to impress, biting at their heels.

Perceptions on the grander scale of things are different, although for what it is, the competition is certainly purposeful.
Declan Bonner, the Donegal manager, introduced nine newbies on matchday one against Down, which shows the pathway plenty are working so diligently behind the scenes to create, has a gateway.

Shane O’Donnell, Charlie McGuinness, Mark Curran, Jamie Grant, Ryan McFadden, Rory O’Donnell, Ultan Doherty, Aaron Doherty and Caolan McColgan all were given first run-outs.

Michael Murphy has played in more dramatic settings than against Antrim in Portglenoe on a misty January Saturday afternoon, but it gave the Donegal captain a decent runabout for a few minutes, having spent the bulk of last year’s Ulster SFC playing through the pain barrier.

“We’ve been back training for the last month now and there’s nothing like getting out onto the pitch,” he said afterwards. “It was nice to get a few minutes but there is plenty to work on.”

Murphy, almost half his life ago, was part of the 2007 McKenna Cup panel when 17, having been contacted by then Donegal manager Brian McIver. Murphy admitted years later he thought that initial call was someone playing a wise-crack, although things worked out well for the then St Eunan’s College student. He urged the youngsters now involved to grasp their opportunity.

“You just seize every moment,” he said. “You see young players coming in and making their first starts, you realise in the inter-county game that you can get a good head start by coming back early and building into the season.”

Perhaps not singing, more so perhaps reading from the same hymn sheet was Caolan Ward, who said he “loved” the McKenna Cup and remembered his own first time in a Donegal jersey that foggy night in Enniskillen in 2013 when the Under-21s were given the competition while the All-Ireland winning panel were bronzed from their end of season trip to Dubai.

Likewise, Ryan McHugh, who sat out of the opening two fixtures, started against Down. Whilst, McHugh, now in his 10th season as a senior, modestly admitted he wasn’t “quite back in the groove,” a moderately competitive outing against Derry last Tuesday night.

“A really good competitive match against a top Ulster team is really all you can ask for,” he said afterwards, bitterly cold and well deserving of his hot shower having conducted the media formalities.

Any player who has spoken over the last few weeks has confessed similar beliefs, as Caolan McGonagle noted: “We’re happy enough to get the games, good competitive games. We’re learning from every game.”

Donegal did make the most of their campaign, being competitive to the last kick of the final against Monaghan.
The first half was worrying, it must be said, with Monaghan’s superiority undoubted, springing into a nine-point lead before the
likes of Murphy,  McGonagle and Michael Langan took Donegal back to the brink, only to lose by a point.

Although the first half in Omagh, and the opening phases of the second were poor from Donegal, the McKenna Cup isn’t the place to form many cemented opinions. It was the same in the semi-final, when Rory Gallagher, the Derry boss, pulled the handbrake when the match was going away from his side with their league opener in mind.

The McKenna Cup is about getting yards into legs, spreading minutes about the panel and giving a look to a few younger players in a less-pressured environment.

“We got four games out of it,” Bonner said in Omagh of the McKenna Cup Eight days out from the start of the League, where would you get better preparation?

“I felt that it was a very worthwhile campaign. We got a lot of lads on the pitch and we got some of the more senior players game time, which was important.”

The league isn’t the premier competition in Gaelic games, although in recent years the close proximity of the teams in each division has made it more exciting on a match by match basis than the summer’s fare.

Donegal’s last five meetings with Mayo, for example, have seen three draws and a victory each. On Sunday, the fixture taking place at Markievicz Park in Sligo due to ongoing pitch works in Castlebar, has probably tipped the odds to an even keel.

No county has endured more ups and downs than Mayo over the last, say, 15 years, yet even in transition they reached successive All-Ireland finals, whereas Donegal’s last semi-final appearance was now eight years ago.

That, for the contemporaries, is the aim for 2022, with Sunday providing a more worthwhile indicator of where Donegal are at.
January wasn’t all bad. A positive result on Sunday would end it on a high.