McGee pleased he decided to go Jim’s way

Monday, September 17, 2012

With one line, Eamon McGee gives a brutally honest appraisal of his football career before Jim McGuinness.

“We definitely did act the bollocks in our earlier days when we were younger.”
Then another.

“I am glad I picked Jim’s way and not Eamon’s way.”

Then another.

“Myself and Jim, we’d have partied together.”

Then another.

“I came back from London [in 2010] and I failed miserably.”

The Gweedore man has no hesitation in admitting he had problems applying himself. He was bold, brash and liked to have a drink too. Liberties, he certainly took.

Initially, he wasn’t part of McGuinness’ plans. Not by the manager’s choice but by his own.

“I met Jim and Jim wanted to do it Jim’s way and I wanted to do it my way. He asked a few things like, ‘do you want to do this’ and I wasn’t prepared to buy into it.”

McGee considered going back to London where in 2009 he had worked, played and had, as he jovially puts it, “the great honour of scoring three points against Kilkenny [in Division 4]”.

But when his younger brother Neil McGee started coming in “at goodness know what hours” from training, McGee got curious. His club form had also been picked up by McGuinness’ antenna.

“He [Neil] just came and said, ‘Jim is going to talk to you and would you be willing to go again?’. And I said, ‘yeah’ this time, I told him I would and Jim came talking to me the following week.”

McGee faced a game of catch-up last summer and had to be satisfied with cameo appearances from the bench but is close to a first-team cert in this campaign.

Looking back to those early days after his return to the panel, he questioned had he made the correct decision in joining up again.

“When I was doing those runs I was saying, ‘what the hell am I at?’. I knew once the first championship game was over, I knew I had made the right choice and if I kept my own side right and trained away that I would not be far away.

“I have never looked back and regretted the decision I made. I am just delighted that I am part of it.”

McGuinness has altered his way of playing football and living his life, McGee claims.

Now a youth worker in Gweedore, his duties are on “keeping kids out of trouble”.

He says: “I’ve definitely changed as a person. This whole outlook Jim has on football you can apply it on life or anything like that there.

At 28, McGee is one of the panel’s elder statesmen and conscious of being an example to the players as much as an upstanding ambassador of Donegal football to the supporters.

“Listen, we didn’t fully appreciate what we represented and what we were at. I think that’s one of the main things Jim has put across and that you have respect for your jersey and your county.

“There were 30,000 people shouting for Donegal in that Cork [All-Ireland semi-final] game and we are lucky to be part of the panel and each and every one of them 30,000 would give their right hand to be part of our set-up.

“You have to appreciate that and we didn’t really respect where we came from. When you go out and have that tracksuit on and young fellas looking up to you, you have to show the right role.

“We are no angels and I don’t want to be pitching out that we are these machines. We do let our hair down. We are just more mature about it and we are definitely conscious of the fact we can’t overdo it.”

He looks back now and cringes at the excuses the players made for their catalogue of defeats and under-performing.

“100% the fault of the players. We can’t go on blaming, we blamed enough through the years, different managements, this wasn’t right, this wasn’t right, county boards.

“We are running out of people to blame and at the end of the day you have to come back to the same personnel, the same thing, it wasn’t anything to do with management.”

Sunday will mark his 100th game for Donegal — “hopefully we’ll be getting man of the match and the Sam Maguire, I’ll be a bit greedy come the 23rd,” he jokes.

But if he’s truthful, which he certainly is, doubts had lingered in his head about how genuine Donegal’s All-Ireland credentials were.

“Being realistic about it, there was this wee tiny bit in my mind [asking], ‘is this another false dawn?’ because there have been so many with Donegal.”

And yet McGee feels Donegal are now setting the bar in Ulster after years of Armagh and Tyrone domination.

“For years, we have put Armagh and Tyrone as these mythical figures, that they are doing this and that, training at such a time.

“I think now, and I am not being big-headed, I think there are other counties in Ulster saying that Donegal are doing this and they are training so many times. We are being talked about now and it is a big, big honour that we have taken over that role because we looked up and respected Tyrone.”Home