Donegal look hell-bent on alienating Jim
Consider, if you will, a much forgotten fact. In 1975, Brian McEniff was part of the management team that guided Sligo to only their second Connacht title. But why was McEniff involved with Sligo? After all, this was the iconic figure who, as a player-manager led Donegal to their first ever Ulster title in 1972. McEniff followed up that groundbreaking achievement by guiding them to a second provincial crown in 1974.
So why was McEniff with Sligo in ’75? The answer is simple. The Donegal County Board ousted him.
Think about that. Donegal had to wait 84 long years before they got their hands on the Anglo-Celt Cup. And how did the Board treat the man who took them out of obscurity? They gave him the boot.
Not to be outdone by their neighbours, Derry went one better than Donegal. This season Derry GAA is celebrating its 125th anniversary. Founded in 1888, the county has won the All-Ireland senior football title on one occasion. The man who steered Derry to that victory was the late Eamon Coleman.
And how did Derry reward the man who ended their 105-year wait for an All-Ireland title? That’s right, in their 106th year they sent him packing.
Now it appears that Donegal are keen to get back in on the action as they seem hell-bent on alienating Jim McGuinness, the inspirational manager who led them from back door ignominy to an All-Ireland title in just two years.
McGuinness’s gripe with the Donegal County Board has been festering for some time. On two occasions last year he pleaded with the Board to suspend club Championship fixtures. The Board complied with his request.
Even though Donegal won the All-Ireland, McGuinness remained unhappy with the club Championship programme.
It’s understood that he and Rory Gallagher drew up an alternative blueprint which they asked the county board to consider. It never saw the light of day.
Rather astonishingly, Donegal’s clubs then approved a new round-robin system which added an extra weekend to the schedule which had provided so many headaches last season. The All-Ireland Gaeltacht Championship (Comórtas Peile na Gaeltachta) created further difficulties for McGuinness as Gweedore’s involvement in that competition meant the McGee brothers weren’t available for a number of training sessions.
Considering the fact that McGuinness went to such lengths to get club Championship games postponed, it’s difficult to comprehend why the Board would introduce a new format that piled more fixtures into the club calendar.
Naturally, McGuinness was annoyed. His annoyance turned to anger when a Donegal official insisted that the new programme had been drawn up in conjunction with McGuinness and that it had earned his seal of approval.
There were other problems. At the start of the season, McGuinness claimed the CCC (Competitions Control Committee) agreed to his request that all Division One and Two League fixtures would be played on the same day. If all the games were held on a Saturday, it meant Donegal could train on a Sunday. But midway through the season, fixtures were set for a Saturday and a Sunday.
Relations between the manager and the board soured even further when the secretary of the CCC refuted McGuinness’s claim an agreement was ever made.
During the summer when McGuinness delivered his bi-annual report to club delegates, the atmosphere in the Anvil Suite of the Villa Rose Hotel was described in The Donegal News as “tetchy and uncomfortable”.
The situation has now reached a crossroads. Beaten by 16 points in the All-Ireland quarter-final, Donegal’s All-Ireland winning manager will not return if his various conditions aren’t met. “The biggest thing for me is to be able to prepare the team properly and I don’t think we got that opportunity this year on some levels so that’s one of the issues we’ll be looking at,” he said recently.
McGuinness isn’t the first manager to wring concessions from the county board before agreeing to sign up for another season. Mayo boss James Horan did the same thing last year. Horan was unhappy about the provision of training pitches, the availability of McHale Park and the variety of hotel bases for Mayo’s matches in Dublin. Horan sought a number of guarantees from his Board before he committed himself to another two-year term.
Earlier in the summer a member of Donegal’s CCC vowed that the committee would try to meet McGuinness ‘halfway’. Such promises will now hold little appeal to McGuinness. It will be all or nothing. That’s his way.
More recently, the county board issued a press release which stated that they wanted Jim McGuinness to stay on.
Of course they do. But that’s not the point. The question is what are they prepared to do to keep him? Should McGuinness walk away, Donegal stand to lose more than a manager. Reports indicate that all the older footballers have pledged to keep playing but only if McGuinness stays. If Jim resigns, there is no guarantee that Rory Kavanagh, Neil McGee, Neil Gallagher and Eamon McGee will remain next season. A father of three children, his wife, Yvonne is expecting twins. In his job with Celtic, he makes two six-hour round trips to Glasgow every week. It’s a tough slog. The Donegal County Board will not need to be reminded that if McGuinness quits, he walks away a hero. If they can’t keep him at the helm, their reviews will not be just as glowing.
