The Great Redeemer

A FEW days after guiding Donegal to their biggest victory in 11 years, Brian McEniff took a walk up the Great Northern Road in Bundoran.

It’s a short journey, but as he wandered onto Roguey and looked out on his home town, he got a sense of how far his team have travelled this year.

The seaside resort was festooned in flags, Donegal shirts intermingled with the Armagh and Tyrone jerseys so common in the town at this time of year. Eleven years and Donegal were back, the county was alive to all sorts of possibilities again.

The transformation McEniff has wrought from a team he barely knew has been the story of the summer. Scared off by horror stories of titles being decided in the high court and late-night drinking sessions in the big smoke, Donegal were the side nobody wanted to manage. McEniff took it because there was no-one else.

And from the dismal league campaign, from the debacle in Enniskillen, considered the worst championship performance by Donegal in living memory, from all the winter turmoil, the hotelier has led Donegal to the cusp of an All-Ireland final. The big question remains how has he done it? “A few things, I suppose. The team had done quite well last year and I knew once we got everyone back fit, that things would change. But we got a bit of luck, too, and we don’t always get luck in Donegal. We got some home draws early on against Longford and Sligo, and got an early game in headquarters against Tipperary.

It was good to get back there so soon and redress the difficulties from last year.”

Nothing could have prepared the team for what was in store. There were shades of last year in Donegal’s drawn quarter-final with Galway. Croke Park was baking, the perception was they let it slip, especially when the GAC, in its infinite wisdom, scheduled the replay for Castlebar.

McEniff recalls coming into Castlebar. Support had been great all year. The manager remembers the Longford game on the back of Fermanagh, 8,000 fans in Ballybofey.

It moved McEniff to applaud the supporters at the final whistle.

Castlebar was different. The players were passing car after car, decked out in the colours. “The way in was enough motivation for boys, the number of cars we passed going to Castlebar at that time of evening. I didn’t have to say anything to the lads.”

Emotion was unleashed that sun-split Sunday evening that had been left untouched for over a decade.

Donegal lived dangerously in the second half, for sure, but the quality and depth of their work-rate deserved victory.

Over the course of a summer, McEniff had risen Donegal football from its nadir to dizzy heights once again.

It’s his fifth decade being involved with Donegal football. There’s the share of topsy-turvy seasons in that past, but nothing like this. Last November, in the midst of the jolly Donegal winter, McEniff was selected to be chairman of the county board. Donegal were still manager-less, but with the ‘92 boss on board, people thought it was only a matter of time before Martin McHugh took the job.

The entire county wanted its greatest ever footballer in the hot-seat and McEniff was no different. McHugh took a long look at the situation and decided it wasn’t for him.

Micheal Oliver McIntyre, a link to the last two managerial teams, withdrew his name. With Christmas coming, Donegal were still without a manager. McEniff and PJ McGowan had both taken Donegal for a few sessions, but things were gradually disintegrating. In the last session before Christmas, only around 10 players showed up.

“We were tying up a deal with Azzuri a few days before Christmas. Charlie O’Donnell (county treasurer) and Noreen Doherty (county secretary) asked me to consider taking the job. I was flummoxed at the time, and told them that I would have to think about it over Christmas, talk it over with my family.”

He was unsure about coming back. He had enjoyed the roller-coaster of last summer, Donegal enjoying their best form in a decade and McEniff able to sit in the stands, distant from it. He enjoyed the experience of being a supporter.

However, he didn’t want to see his county without a manager. Declan Bonner had suggested he would be available for the post in April. But that was months away. The league was bearing down on Donegal and there hadn’t been an organised training session.

“I rang each of the lads personally and asked them to come to a meeting in Letterkenny on December 30. I left the boys to talk about it, and they asked me to take the job. I had made up my own mind that I would take it if they asked me.”

They asked him, but the landscape of Donegal football had changed since he was last involved. As he talks through the year in his sitting-room, a picture catches the eye of himself and Anthony Molloy, his on-field lieutenant in ‘92.

That team were different, they had grown from boys to men under his watchful gaze. Most were in their late 20s or early 30s and settled down. McEniff could have passed the current bunch on the street and not have recognised them. Niall McCready, his godson, had returned from a few years in New York and he knew Brendan Devanney from their Australian adventure. Beyond that nothing.

“These were young guys, and I used to look at them, ‘Christ what am I doing here’. Early on, they wanted to know where I was coming from, because I was doing what they called donkey work, stuff that Mickey Moran wouldn’t have done.”

In the league, the winter turmoil took its toll.

They went from heavy defeat to heavy defeat, went through a couple of trainers. Donegal looked dishevelled and disorganised.

HORRIFIC is how he now remembers that period. Martin Carney, Slyvie Maguire, Bonner, old friends from better times, kept ringing with encouragement but he recollects that time as extremely difficult.

Of course, the spine of the team were injured and they only started training near the end of January.

But by the time Kerry consigned Donegal to Division Two football for the first time in 16 years on a windy day in Ballyshannon, things had to be discussed.

“We had a good sit-down after the Kerry match, and the players did what we used to do with the ‘92 team. We closed the door, let no county board officials in and had a serious amount of blood-letting. People said what they had to say, I gave the players a bit of ground to say what was on their mind. They gave me a bit of ground to say what I had to say.”

Anthony Harkin, the ‘92 trainer, was brought in. Many within the county believe that to be a turning point.

Harkin has made a difference. And the trip to Cork, with Donegal’s league already in rubble, helped too.

He still felt himself distant from the team. He’d look around and see he was old enough to be grandfather to some of them. Some steam had to be left off. And they did in Cork.

“We decided to play the game for what it was worth. We were relegated anyway at that stage.

That night, we went out on the town. We went to a pub which was noisy and packed. I bought the boys a few drinks and just said good night and let them do what they wanted. It was good, it built a bit of rapport between me and the lads.

“We went down to Cork with a bit of a cavalier approach, had a bit of craic travelling down and it showed the lads a more human side to me. The boys started to see I wasn’t the old fogey they might have thought I was. They saw I am a very committed Donegal man and that helped shorten the distance between us.”

McEniff keeps saying this achievement is about the boys, it has been the team who have put in the effort to get this far. There is no escaping that the summer has been an enormously satisfying one for him, too.

Particularly beating Galway.

DONEGAL never beat Galway. They were a bogey side. He delves into the encyclopaedia in his mind of every Donegal game he has watched and played in, remembers the league final of ‘67, the All-Ireland semi-final of ‘83.

“They were ghosts there to be exorcised. People forget the ghost of ‘67, Aidy Gallagher’s penalty, when he placed the ball, it rolled off the spot and when he went back to replace it, the referee, whose name is indelibly cast in the mind of every Donegal person of my vintage, Eamon Moles, gave a free out and Galway went up and got a point. Instead of going in by seven points ahead, we were only three points ahead at half-time.

“Then there was the 1974 semi-final, when myself and Seamus Bonner got hurt in the first 20 minutes. In the 1983 semi-final, Val Daly’s deflected shot went up, left Noel McCole unsighted and bounced over his head. Then, we went up and weren’t given a free for the equalising score.”

The bad luck stories mounted in Donegal. Supporters kept catalogues of them until he led the county to the promised land in 1992, turning all the hard luck stories into sentiment.

He accepts Donegal have got their share of luck this year, although that shouldn’t take away from the achievement.

The fall-out from last year’s drawn encounter with Dublin is common knowledge. This year, Donegal haven’t stayed in Dublin after either of their games. After the draw with Galway, they were eating steaks in Castleblaney in record time.

Sunday is the greatest challenge of his return, the greatest challenge since he shocked the Dubs in Croker.

Armagh are robust and physical, although if there is a team left in the competition that can mix it with them, it would be Donegal.

“Enormity of task, people would glibly say Donegal are the team to play Armagh. We had no favourite team to play against, we have great respect for Armagh, they are a physically imposing side but we play our own brand of football and they are going to have to cope with that.

“They are a very professional outfit, and while they mightn’t be getting the recognition for how good they are, everyone in Donegal recognises the depth of this Armagh side.

“We don’t have a track-record currently, we are only establishing ourselves now, and people are beginning to see there are good footballers in Donegal.

“But we have more to prove. Can we win it? That’s the big question mark. Can we beat the team at the highest level?

“Nobody can put their hand on their heart and say we can or we can’t because the team haven’t been down that road yet. Sunday will answer that question.”

Sunday is another of those big days McEniff has been leading Donegal into for 30 years. The flags are out in Bundoran again. The manager says it is because of the players. But, his folk hero status was cultivated long and arduously in the county he has such love for.

Sunday is about him, too.