Tragic Maguire inspires McGrath

Wrapped in a Brazilian flag sporting the name of his late friend Tomás Maguire at Donegal’s Ulster final homecoming in July, Paddy McGrath admits he was emotional.

Who wouldn’t be? Maguire had only died in a road accident in Western Australia the month previous. The 24-year-old had been a footballer of some quality and had even been called up by Jim McGuinness to the extended training panel earlier this year but opted to head Down Under.

However, to McGrath most of all he was a friend and an Ardara club mate who he modelled himself on.

“The year before Tomás brought the Brazilian flag to the [Ulster final] game with him. The [Ardara] boys did the same this year and then they just gave me the flag for the celebration afterwards.

“It was nice. I always looked up to Tomás as a younger player. He was always a couple of age groups ahead of me and he wasalways a lightning corner-back.

“I always looked up to him, he was playing in the same position and I played alongside him and it was pure shock at the time when it happened.

“He will never be forgotten so long as we are about, playing away, he is still there with us in the club. There is a jersey that is left there in the dressing room all the time for Tomás and we know that every day he is with us.”

McGrath attempted to convince Maguire to shelve his Oz plans and come on board with Donegal.

“I was constantly ringing him to see if he was going to [come in] but Tomás just had other plans and he could not commit to it so he headed off to Australia.”

He will be the first person McGrath thinks of when he takes to the field tomorrow afternoon but emotion is unlikely to get the better of the 23-year-old.

After all, this is the same defender who played the 2010 All-Ireland U21 final with a broken jaw.

Then manager McGuinness recalls the character McGrath showed to line out against Dublin that day.

“It says a lot for the person involved. It was a bit of a surreal conversation to be honest with him, his mother and the surgeon. And he put his body on the line in the first minute of the game as well.

“I read a book once about Scott going across to the North Pole and he said, ‘hire character and teach them the skills’ because obviously if you hire the wrong characters there and they mess up, everybody is dead. It wasn’t necessarily how good you were, it’s about the person.”

Naturally, McGrath’s recollection of it is more modest. “I played with it, I broke it the game before in the semi-final against Tipperary and thankfully the doctor got me right for the game. It wasn’t 100% but I managed to play that day.”

Despite losing to Dublin and the injury, his performance convinced manager John Joe Doherty to invite him into the senior panel and then give him his championship debut against Down as an extra-time substitute in Ballybofey.

McGrath became a fixture in McGuinness’s team last year and craves the feeling the Glenties man’s training sessions give him.

“It is not easy, it takes hard work but McGuinness has us well tuned and focused. He is a very good trainer, he has us training hard but it is a team that also wants to train hard.

“It is good to be physically fit, you feel great every morning that you wake up and it is something that you just like doing, you enjoy it.”

While McGrath admits Donegal’s progress has accelerated over the past two seasons he never doubted the team’s capabilities.

“It was something that I never thought that we couldn’t achieve at all, it was something that I never thought that we wouldn’t get there.

“It has been a great two years, we have got there so quickly, we have come so far in two years. We always wanted to start off with Ulster first and we did last year, we won Ulster and got into a semi-final.

“It was great and our main aim this year was to win Ulster again and we have done that and then to get into an All-Ireland final and we have done that and now it is about getting over the line.”