There is nobody cutting corner

Q: After a barrage day of media, what’s the best question you’ve been asked?

A: “That one!”

Q: You were known to be big into your music. Have you brought it into your coaching?

A: “Darragh Ó Sé said at the Ulster All Stars that he remembered me being a good dancer. I was saying that when we were out dancing he was up at the bar chatting up whoever! We train to music a lot of the time. When it’s mundane or running through stuff that is repetition we train to music. It’s good. You get someone like Eamon McGee who puts on the iPad Shuffle and it tells you a lot about the man. I remember the first time I heard his I was thinking: ‘That has sorted out a lot of questions in my head!’ Anything that can make the thing relaxed and get the work done I have no problem.”

Q: Dublin like to listen to music just before they hit the field.

A: “Our boys play plenty of dance music in the dressing room... whatever makes them happy. If it’s Brendan Shine, once they’re happy I’m happy!”

Q: What about those odds (7/1) before the Dublin game?

A: “According to the reports, plenty of people backed us. A million pound was paid out on Donegal but maybe because it was a two-horse race and the odds were very, very high and people might have said ‘sure, if I lose it’s not a big deal to throw a few pound on’. It’s completely and utterly irrelevant. People forecasting odds and that type of stuff? Nobody knows what’s going on in our dressing room.”

Q: You weren’t totally happy with what happened against Dublin?

A: “That will probably stay in-house. There’s a lot of things we work on every single day and we didn’t deliver on them. There’s a lot of things we didn’t deliver on against Armagh. For me, it’s about trying to get that performance together but we’re going to need to pull 70 minutes together to beat Kerry and be consistent over the 70.”

Q: How much does the opposition shape your tactics?

A: “It would to an extent. It would vary between 10, 15, 20% to how much we change and move things around. But there’s a lot of things central to what we do and we need to execute them every day. That’s the main focus of our approach.”

Q: Are Kerry people different?

A: “They’re very passionate about their football. You’d have huge crowds at club games down there. They’re very demanding in terms of their supporters. They expect All-Irelands and expect to be in All-Irelands so the players are programmed for that and they understand that they need to be achieving all the time. Somebody asked me was I surprised that Kerry were in the final. You’d never be surprised if Kerry are in the final. You expect to be them at the business end every year, and that’s a very strong mindset to have for a group of players to believe that they should be there and believing that they’re going to win. We know that’s going to be the case, that they’ll be going into that game with 100% that they’re going to win the match and we have to go into the game with a similar mindset.”

Q: How well do you know Eamonn Fitzmaurice?

A: “I would have met Eamonn once or twice but, no, I wouldn’t know him on a personal level. But I have been very impressed by him and what he has done in a short space of time and what he has done and his flexibility in his tactics. He will be bringing things to the table and he will be asking questions of us. We’ve got to try and pre-empt as many things as possible. We might things up ourselves and we’re not afraid to do that.”

Q: Eugene Eivers trains your Dublin-based players in IT Blanchardstown. How can you can trust a guy so much to replicate the work you do in Donegal?

A: “Well, I lived with him in Tralee for two years. So everyone I have in the set-up I really do trust them. That is important.”

Q: You’ve come a long way with this group of footballers.

A: “In five years, with the U21s and the seniors, that’s a huge chunk of time out of your life. It’s a big part of your life. You’re living with these fellas and coaching these fellas. Some of them have got married, some of them have had kids, gone to college and are out of college again. These are all life experiences. When I started out, I had only one child and now I have five. It’s a journey we’re on.”

Q: You have a few ways of keep discipline in the camp.

A: “The fact that they’re so committed to the jersey and so committed to the training, it makes it very pure. There is nobody bull-shitting and there is nobody cutting corners. There is nobody not doing gym work away from the group and when they’re with the group everybody is pushing. There is never any bad feeling. I have a simple strategy from the first year that if anybody disrespects anyone in the group we all do 100 press-ups. That only happened five or six times in that year and it was wiped out.”

Q: But what’s disrespect?

A: “You could say something to me, I say something to you and it’s no big deal. If you cross a line and you disrespect someone, it’s the tone. You can be snappy with someone to push them ‘Come on’ (claps hands). That’s fine. You can talk down to someone, or go over the top — that’s disrespect. There is a boundary. How can you disrespect a team-mate and expect that team-mate to fight tooth and nail for you in a Championship match?”

Q: You believe success and bonding goes hand in hand?

A: “If you believe you have done all the right things and worked really hard and earned it together. Once you get that victory then, of course, I don’t think there is a better feeling in the world than just sitting looking across the dressing room at a team-mate and you’re shattered and he is sitting there shattered and you have done something out on the pitch... I don’t think there is a better feeling in the world. And that bond stays then. It never leaves and it is probably never leaves a lot of the minds of supporters as well. It is a very special thing.”

Q: How difficult is it for you training earlier in the season?

A: “Preparation is the number one thing. But we have a nightmare situation in the winter. It is a disaster. There is no other word for it because you have 15 or 16 players working out of the county or in college. And if you want to train hard, it is wild hard to do that when you have 16 there and they are thinking ‘Jesus Christ, what are the other 16 doing’.”

Q: Was a defence of your 2012 All-Ireland title out of reach last season?

A: “Definitely not. It is just preparation, the ability to prepare. We didn’t even have our players to train them for four weeks out of the eight of the Ulster championship.

Q: What about another training camp (Donegal have since worked in Lough Erne)?

A: “It’s definitely not Johnstown House because the whole country knows about us there now. Google Earth could be under serious siege by Kerry!”