Tommy Martin: Jim McGuinness has been getting a gleeful shoeing but lots of it is small-minded nonsense

Jim McGuinness has been portrayed as chancer-in-chief of modern GAA coaching, a snake-oil salesman.

Donegal manager Jim McGuinness during the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship final. Pic: Seb Daly/Sportsfile.

I write this column while on holidays in Kerry, which, I’m sure you will understand, is not ideal.

Nothing against the singular charms of the Kingdom, but when they have just beaten your county by 10 points in an All-Ireland final, it can be hard to stomach.

Can you imagine a Cork fan, hours after their All-Ireland hurling humbling, treating themselves to a hiking break in the Glen of Aherlow followed by a few nights in the Horse & Jockey?

It’s not just the obvious things, like the Kerry flags, banners and team posters on every stationary object, celebrating the wonder of the county’s 847th All-Ireland, or whatever it is.

It’s things like the ice cream shop, which was offering a Sam Maguire special of mint choc and pineapple, topped with whipped – “just like Donegal!” – cream. I mean, come on.

To quote the famous line from Withnail and I, it feels like I’ve gone on holiday by mistake. On Monday night I head into the Feale Bar in Ballybunion where, unsurprisingly, the final was being played on a loop. I roll my eyes and the barman smiles apologetically, using the universal gesture known as sorry-not-sorry.

Down the back a fair few lads were reaching the end of day two. The local GAA lotto was due to be drawn that night, but it turned out the club chairman was, shall we say, too central to the celebrations to do the needful, so the draw was postponed.

I bought a ticket anyway in the spirit of every metaphorical cloud having a silver lining, unlike the actual clouds which, to put the tin hat on things, only contained blankets of drizzly rain.

On the TV screen, the match is at the bit in the doomed Donegal fightback when the gap is down to four and Donegal win a breaking ball under the Hogan Stand.

The ball squirts out a few yards in front of Paddy McBrearty but he is struggling to reach it so tries a Luka Modric style outside of the boot pass along the ground instead of gathering it.

I shake my head and think of the interesting article in the match programme about the history of Gaelic football in the two counties, or the lack of it in Donegal until well into the 20th century, on account of it being soccer territory.

Kerry, meantime, were into double figures in All-Irelands at this point and writing books about to how to play the damn thing.

Apparently even then a lot of matches in Donegal were played on beaches for want of a pitch, making it not uncommon for matches to be abandoned due to tides. The foamy embrace of the sea would have been sweet relief on Sunday afternoon, I reflect.

The barman tells me he went to the match, left a few minutes before the end and was back behind the bar of the Feale by 9.30pm.

All business, no messing around, just like Kerry on the day. They know what they are about on All-Ireland Sunday. They’d want to, they’ve been in over 60 of them. I had an inkling it would be like this, waking on the morning of the match at home in Donegal after a family wedding, for what was only our fourth ever final.

“God, I’m really nervous,” I tell my wife, a night of fitful sleep behind me.

“You’d think you were playing,” she says, typically tender with her emotional support.

“At least then I’d be able to do something about it,” I point out.

To which she roars with laughter, a laughter that would, in the days to come, often return to her in unguarded moments, whenever the image of me puffing red-faced up and down the Croke Park sod would come hilariously to her mind. Ha bloody ha.

I suspect all this is behind the shenanigans before throw-in, when Donegal were more focused on the minutiae of their warmup than lining up to chat with Michael D and take in the full majesty of the parade.

They were slated for disrespecting All-Ireland final tradition, but at that moment the scoreline in the All-Ireland final tradition front read 38-2 in Kerry’s favour, so maybe they didn’t want to play that game.

For some reason, I think of the Beatles nipping into the Buckingham Palace toilets for a fag before getting their MBEs.

Tough and all as it is for me supping on my pint while surrounded by the impenetrable banter of Kerrymen on a two-day bender, I think of Jim McGuinness and the boys, at that moment on a stage in Donegal Town staring at their feet, unresponsive to Daniel O’Donnell’s valiant efforts to cheer them up.

McGuinness, in particular, has been getting a gleeful shoeing in the days since. Plenty of it is a fair cop, given how he was comprehensively – as Sam Allardyce would say – out-tacticked by Jack O’Connor and Cian O’Neill in the opposition camp. I suspect Kerry were so good on the day that anything you’d have done would have had the tactical whack-a-mole effect of presenting another problem.

But lots of the stick is pure small-minded nonsense, positioning McGuinness as chancer-in-chief of modern GAA coaching, a snake-oil salesmen whose ego and reputation vastly overreaches his achievements.

If you were to believe some of the reaction, Kerry are a bunch of mystical fairies who came fluttering down from the mountains armed with the new rules to weave magic upon the grim-faced industrialists of the north and their dark, satanic ways. In its air of moral righteousness, I imagine the reaction to McGuinness getting his comeuppance to be like the giddy chatter on the way home from the burning of a mediaeval heretic.

He got it wrong on Sunday, and the team didn’t attack the game the way Kerry did, which is on him too. It was only Donegal’s fourth All-Ireland final, but he has been responsible for 75% of them.

And lest we forget when he came back in the winter of 2023 Donegal had just been relegated from Division 1 and been thumped by Down in Ulster and Tyrone in a preliminary quarter-final, had not won Ulster in five years and had not been in All-Ireland semi-final since 2014. Since then, they’ve won Ulster twice and been in an All-Ireland semi-final and final. Not bad for a spoofer.

I finish the pint and toast the victorious hosts and envy their big day ease, exemplified by the barman with his nailed down All-Ireland itinerary. At least you’re not from Cork, someone says, and finally, we have something in common.