Tommy Martin: Solving the mystery of Jim McGuinness and David Clifford's great escapes
Jim McGuinness and David Clifford both escaped punishment indiscretions during last weekend's Royal Rumble in Killarney. Pics: Sportsfile/Inpho
In Donegal, we’ve always thought Jim McGuinness walked on water, but we’ve never seen him pull off an actual miracle.
Or maybe it was more of a Jedi mind trick that persuaded referee Seán Hurson not to include the Donegal manager in his considered reflections on a day out in the Kingdom last Saturday.
When Hurson called himself and Kerry boss Jack O’Connor for a ticking off before the start of the second half of Wrestlemania Killarney, big Jim presumably waved his hand in front of Hurson’s face, a la Obi Wan Kenobi, and calmly told the Tyrone whistler that he should write in his little book that he had enjoyed a lovely day in the shadow of Macgillycuddy’s Reeks and that would be the end of the matter.
Lo and behold, McGuinness escaped any further action for his shove on Kerry’s Diarmuid O’Connor during the half-time donnybrook, a crime that should have gotten him sent to the GAA gulag for the entire championship by the letter of the law.
It may be the equivalent of a magistrate sending a 19th-century peasant to Van Diemen’s Land for robbing a loaf of bread, but that’s no consolation to Dublin manager Ger Brennan, still serving out his hard time in GAA Shawshank.
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Brennan is anxiously contemplating his return to society after his 12-week ban for mild horseplay with a Galway hanger-on during the league but, thankfully, should return to the Dubs camp in time for their post-Championship piss-up in mid-June.
Unlike the unfortunate Brennan, the amazing McGuinness and his beautiful assistant David Clifford managed to free themselves from the manacles of the GAA disciplinary system in record time.
Clifford, too, had looked bang to rights for his alleged forearm smash on Donegal’s Caolan McGonagle earlier in the match. Granted we only became aware of this because former Donegal star Patrick McBrearty went all Woodward and Bernstein on the GAA+ half-time analysis, wondering aloud why no one had mentioned that McGonagle was still flossing bits of Clifford’s elbow from between his lateral incisors, until the producers were forced to dig out the footage from the Fitzgerald Stadium recycling bin.
Meanwhile, McGuinness seemed certain to fall foul of the same ‘physical interference’ rules that saw Brennan breaking rocks in an orange jumpsuit throughout the spring. But there they were, come Tuesday, Gaelic football’s two highest profile figures, hand in hand and bowing extravagantly, taking the applause of the crowd for their death-defying feats of escapology, the chains and padlocks of the CCCC rulebook lying around their ankles.
No one could figure out how they did it, hence the recourse to theories about McGuinness’s renowned faculty for mind control voodoo. He had tried it out in the post-match press conference when responding to probing from intrepid Off The Ball GAA correspondent Tommy Rooney.
Rooney gently queried whether the Donegal boss felt he might be in a bit of bother for an incident that everyone had seen on the telly, apart from the poor oul’ fellas on the side of the mountain who can’t get GAA Plus on their Bakelite wireless sets.
“You did not see me shove that dirty Kerry bugger, Tommy, you are merely flying a kite,” the Donegal boss replied, doing his best Keith Barry impression. But McGuinness forgot that sports journalists have no mortal souls and are therefore immune to all acts of hypnosis.
So, the Glenties guru was roundly panned in the media for his response to Rooney’s totally fair questioning. His attitude was adjudged to have been snippy and snarky and unbecoming of a man who would surely soon be carving chess pieces alongside Ger Brennan to while away the long, hopeless days of intercounty incarceration.
Of course, what people don’t realise is that when you come from Donegal you think of the world in terms of one of those rubbish medieval maps, where everything outside of the county just says ‘Here Be Monsters’. This attitude is what comes from sharing most of your land border with Tyrone.
Naturally, it’s a worldview that leads to a certain amount of paranoia. But just because you are paranoid, doesn’t mean you aren’t the only county in Ireland that doesn’t have a train station.
McGuinness has previous in this regard, for example slating the CCCC for arranging a neutral game against Mayo in Roscommon’s Dr Hyde Park last year. Not only was this venue much closer to Mayo, McGuinness argued, but the CCCC forgot Donegal would have to fight several dragons to get there in time for throw-in. “It would only happen because it’s us,” McGuinness said, waving his Donegal Creameries embossed tinfoil hat in the air.
Like all the great managers, McGuinness is entirely unafraid of coming over as a bollox if he feels he or his team are under threat. This can feel strange when representing Donegal, a county most people have a fondness for and whose people are expected to conduct themselves with a degree of whimsical self-deprecation. McGuinness, however, is so ill-fitting of the ‘Cinderella County’ trope, that were he to star in the eponymous fairy story as the ragged heroine, Prince Charming would have shacked up with one of the Ugly Sisters.
Anyway, many felt the sour press conference exchange had harmed his cause, drawing attention to his misdemeanour in a way that would force the GAA constabulary to swing into action. Nothing of the sort, as it turned out. Hurson’s report was presumably vague enough to allow the GAA top brass to extricate themselves from what would have been the most high-profile and controversial disciplinary case since Pontius Pilate decided he was going to finish up early for the Easter hols.
While any ban for Clifford would have been seismic, sending McGuinness to Sing Sing for the rest of the championship would probably not only have killed off Donegal’s high hopes of All-Ireland glory, but also robbed the GAA’s big show of one of its leading characters.
Not for a moment to suggest that the CCCC is more concerned about ratings than the proper dispensation of disciplinary justice. At the same time, the advent of GAA+ means that the association, to go with its status as administrator, promoter, rulemaker and moral guardian of the national soul, is also now a streamer, just like Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney Plus.
And boy does GAA+ have a hit on its hands. It pulled in over €5million in revenue last year for the association, minus the costs incurred in fitting its massive army of pundits out in ginormous white trainers. Would HBO have killed off Tony Soprano after season two of the seminal gangster drama? No chance. Ger Brennan, alas, is clearly more in the minor, Big Pussy Bonpiensero category.
GAA handling disciplinary matters like prestige drama showrunners deciding which characters to kill off at the end of every season? Far-fetched, but as good a way as any to explain the mystery of McGuinness and Clifford and their Killarney great escape.
