Donegal's 2013 Mayo disaster still difficult to recall - Frank McGlynn

It was a day when Donegal’s house of cards fell spectacularly as the team slid to its  heaviest Championship defeat in 67 years.

Jim McGuinness’s men were vulnerable - coming into the last eight of the All-Ireland series having relinquished their Ulster title to Monaghan. The aura faded further as they stumbled past lowly Laois in the previous Qualifier round.

Waiting to expose all of that as well as inflict their own measure of revenge for the previous September's All-Ireland decider defeat was a primed and motivated Mayo. Two early goals from Cillian O’Connor and Donal Vaughan had Mayo steamrolling ahead by the 13th minute.

Reigning Player of the Year Karl Lacey was called into action after just 23 minutes but it was clear he was nowhere near fit. Mark McHugh, poleaxed in that provincial final loss to the Farney men, had suffered a perforated eardrum as well as a concussion.

But so out of gas were Donegal that they were forced to start a player that had spent two nights in hospital less than a fortnight previously. Truth be told, the warning signs were there from way out that season, a decade ago now, long before that 4-17 to 1-10 hammering by Mayo.  

Relegation from Division 1 looked to have been recovered from when Donegal defeated Tyrone in Ballybofey in May, but defeat in the Ulster final and then the manner of their crumbling surrender of the Sam Maguire left Donegal and their manager at a crossroads.

“At the time you’re in a certain mindset and you’re trying to believe that things are going well,”  Frank McGlynn said of 2013.  
“You’re in the thick of it. But it was only when the season finished, when you looked back, it was only then you realised just how far off the pace we were from the previous year.

“The Monaghan defeat in the Ulster final and the heavy Mayo loss, that entire experience served as a real bolt for everyone. And that was always going to have an influence on 2014. We were wanting to get back at it earlier than usual that season.
“2013 was a wake up call. 2012, it just didn’t happen by chance - we had to get back to basics, and get the work under our belts”.

On a wet and miserable afternoon in Carrick-on-Shannon Donegal got back to winning ways but they were made to work by a dogged Laois. It wasn’t pretty as Jim McGuinness and Rory Gallagher heatedly clashed with Justin McNulty and Fergal Byron along the sideline. Still - McGlynn said -  Donegal were content enough and the feeling after was one of ‘job done’.

“That All-Ireland series, I remember going to Carrick-on-Shannon the night before the Laois game, we stayed in Bundoran. It was a really wet weekend. I might be wrong but I think it was the weekend Letterkenny Hospital flooded.

“We stumbled through on a terrible afternoon. We were always expected to win that day. But we just about got the better of Laois.

“The mindset automatically switched to the sense that ‘we’re back in this now, it’s Mayo at Croke Park next’. We still were the defending All-Ireland champions. We approached it like we were going to win it.”

Donegal and Mayo were competitors for the big prizes and the season prior, Michael Murphy and Co. inflicted the latest in their long line of All-Ireland final disappointments. Rory Kavanagh later detailed in his excellent Autobiography, ‘Winning’, that there was also a niggly undercurrent to that rivalry.

Behind closed doors challenge matches often turned to nasty affairs. So Donegal set off for Jones Road in full knowledge that Mayo were gunning for them, and on a number of levels. Mayo were ready for war. But, as it turned out, Donegal simply weren’t.

“Looking back now, myself, I’d struggled that season,” McGlynn continued. “I missed a chunk of the league and I didn’t have a great pre-season.  I was always playing catch up. Again, in your own head you try to convince yourself that you’re ready.

“Mayo were a rival. We were up for it. But where the minds were willing, the bodies simply weren’t able. It was a harrowing experience. It’s one I’ll never forget. To go from All-Ireland champions to being well beaten like that, at the quarter-final stages, it was such a contrast.

“Physically, we were so far off the pace. I remember picking up the ball around the ‘45' one time and going to turn. Aidan O’Shea landed a hefty shoulder on me. I managed to pick the ball up again, get straightened, but was ripe pickings for the second contact.

“And they were in their full right, when they were on top of us, to twist the knife. We would have been no different. And they let us know”.

By the midpoint, the scoreboard already read 2-10 to 0-4 - a simply stunning sight when you consider what the bedrock of Donegal’s renaissance, under Jim, had been built upon.

“Coming back out, I remember looking up at the scoreboard and the clock. It’s right up there with my worst ever experiences ever on a football pitch. Half way through the second half, the hill was nearly empty. It was that sparsely populated that if there was someone there you knew, you’d have picked them out!

“It was the longest half of football - it just seemed to go on forever. And that’s what happens when you’re so far behind. We weren’t even competitive. And that hurt. Jim would say you’re All-Ireland champions until you’re not. That fact was often referenced.

“But there we were, unable to even go out on our shields. The minute we got knocked out, that really hit home. That part of it was all over”.

For a number of weeks it felt like Donegal and McGuinness’s time together was ending in the most underwhelming of fashions. He was already employed by Celtic and the initial word was that Glasgow was now going to become his permanent residence.

Eventually, he and the county board got round a table. As far as McGuinness was concerned, certain things had to be guaranteed by others if he was to take the reins for a fourth successive season.

For four of the eight weeks of the duration of the 2013 Ulster Championship, Donegal players were away on club duty as three rounds of club championship were shoehorned into summer.

Injuries were picked up, club rivalries became heated. And, like water and oil, it was painfully obvious that the club and county merger just hadn’t mixed.

McGuinness, at the time, insisted there were too many "negative" dynamics and Donegal got no "traction" at training. "We were managing a situation, not a team," he recalled.

For 2014, it was decided that all club championship action in the county would be stalled until Donegal’s interest was finished. And while that season ultimately ended in an All-Ireland final defeat at the hands of Kerry - their restructured approach had made all the difference.

“It was fuel - there is no doubt about that. The way 2013 went, we asked to come back in as early as we could. There was that doubt if Jim would be coming back in, that went on for a few weeks. But once he committed, with the new backroom team, it was back down to serious business.

“I remember that meeting, the one just before we all regrouped. Jim explained in great detail that we weren’t really a county team training for the big days in 2013, we were a squad just limping from week to week.

“Because of that there was no real focus on where we were actually going. But there was a serious shift in all of that going back into 2014. First things first, we were determined to get that Ulster title back. Once we squared that the drive was the All-Ireland final.

“Ultimately, we came up short at the last hurdle. And that hurt. But we were able to draw a line of sorts under 2013. We were able to park it and move on”.