A reunion with old friends from the Big Apple

There was a stage in my footballing life where Donegal was more important to me than Cork.

Not just me. Tompkins, Mike Maguire, Haulie O’Neill from Clon, the Collins brothers. We were neighbours proudly representing the same team. Representing Donegal at Gaelic Park in the Bronx.

And though bred and honed in West Cork, we were as Donegal as their own. Small wonder.

On every construction site in Manhattan and beyond, there was a scattering of Donegal men. We were frequently outnumbered three to one on the scaffolds. But they were good sorts who scrapped and worked and played as hard as they toiled. There wasn’t much going on for them — or us — at home, but they were proud of Tir Conaill six days a week and twice as much on Sunday when it came to gaelic football.

I’ve seen football passion around the place but it burns brightest in Donegal. They’re zealots. One of my last days in a Cork jersey came in a National League outing in Ballybofey. I was creaking too much at that stage to make a valid contribution to Cork but reminding me of that wasn’t enough as I left the pitch. They started abusing me for losing to Derry in the All-Ireland final a few years before that.

Before the incarnation of Jimmy McGuinness the manager, there was always that same chest-out, chin-out feeling about Donegal. Quench their rage, and you always sensed you had their measure. But this is a very different county now. The lads may still file into the Bronx, they may still populate the scaffolding dotted around the five boroughs, but they’ve collectively bought into a new world under McGuinness. Never mind the quality, feel the breadth of our dreams. Beating Kerry in Croke Park. Only a few months before they were routed by the Kingdom in Killarney. Now they’ve seen them off in August.

Eyeing up Cork and a September they haven’t seen in two decades.

Donegal have gone from gunslingers to snipers and the greatest trick McGuinness has pulled is not suffocating the opposition — it’s bringing the population of the county and the Donegal diaspora at large with him on this journey. It’s easy to see how the players have bought into it. They’re living it every day. But the support has rowed in behind too, forgetting the aesthetics and the art. As McGuinness said, the likes of Kerry can be particular how they win an All-Ireland. Donegal can’t.

For sure, they are more inventive this season than last. In 2011 they were as pretty as Wimbledon in the days of Vinnie Jones and the Crazy Gang. Their defence speaks for itself and to nominate individuals would do it the worst kind of insult. Bradley and Kavanagh are symbols of the new Donegal. Game and determined, rangy and obstructive when they need to be. In McHugh, McBrearty — one of the stellar talents in the game — McFadden and Murphy, they possess blue collar and white collar forwards. The thought of the latter pair circling in front of your defence should be enough to keep Messrs Kissane and O’Leary honest tomorrow. If that doesn’t, a quiet word from Shields and Cadogan should do the trick. Sit tight lads, don’t get sucked up the field.

It’s been said that Cork can play it any way you like — physical, fast, long or short — but isn’t that precisely what McGuinness has brought to Donegal?

Isn’t he almost a younger version of Counihan? Sober, clever, no truck with flash or hostages to fortune.

I don’t know whether to bring a match programme or a chess board to my seat tomorrow. Though I know, broadly speaking, what Donegal will bring to the table at half three, I’ll have a better idea of how they’ll spend their evening 15 minutes later. But I’m thinking of Cork in the 2009 All-Ireland final when they blitzed Kerry in the first ten minutes. Only that this time Cork don’t take their foot off the victim’s throat.

Naturally it’s impossible to squeeze a semi-final for 70 minutes. The trick isn’t to score so much in those segments, but to minimise the damage where you’re on the back foot. Cork found themselves on the ropes for 20 minutes against Kildare and lost half a dozen points. They need to halve that.

The speculation regarding Paddy Kelly’s selection, and his alleged marking detail on Mark McHugh is interesting and it may even be accurate. I hope not. If it goes pear-shaped for Cork, it’s a double negative, because Cork will also have lost their primary long range passer of the ball.

Even in the era of super athletes in the GAA, no defender backtracks as quickly as the ball. If Cork can dissect Donegal with long, raking balls — not necessarily high-angled ones to Nicholas Murphy, though there will be a smattering of them too — then the likes of Donncha O’Connor, Colm O’Neill and Paul Kerrigan will prosper, and have space to prosper in.

Long range point-taking may prove important but not so important that Noel O’Leary and Paudie Kissane should be encouraged to desert their posts and go all gung-ho.

Cork have plenty of ability from range both from play and frees. Remember, the key moment in Donegal’s quarter-final success over Kerry was not Colm McFadden’s flukey goal, but the departure of Kerry’s Bryan Sheehan. My good neighbours lost Sheehan, Brosnan, inexplicably replaced Declan O’Sullivan, were well below their best and almost scrambled a draw. Donegal seized up close to the finish against Dublin last year and again in this year’s quarter-final. It isn’t fitness, it’s a lack of this kind of pressure and big day experience.

For all their faults down the years, no one can say Cork aren’t now well used to autumn in Croker.

Who’ll outfox who? Donegal may try and make midfield redundant, they will ratchet up the intensity to a level that perhaps Cork — for all their big game knowledge — have yet to experience. But there are so many options sitting behind Conor Counihan on the subs’ bench, that it is inconceivable that Cork won’t find a way.

Marc Ó Sé said the other night that Donegal are very, very difficult to play against. So too are Cork. And compared to the quarter-final a year ago against Mayo, they are in a far better place. Canty is game ready. So too Sheehan, Goulding and O’Neill, even if only one of that trio is slated to start. They motored past a Kildare side that is not dissimilar to Donegal in its power and pressure game.

This may go the distance, especially if Cork fail to find a way through to Paul Durcan. But where Kerry ran out of alternatives from No 16-20, Cork have them in abundance — right down to No 24 if GAA rules permitted.

That’ll be the difference.