The story of McGuinness the messiah who delivers on his promise

GLORIOUS RISE: Donegal players celebrate winning the penalty shootout after the Ulster GAA Football Senior Championship final match against Armagh and Donegal at St Tiernach’s Par. Picture: Ramsey Cardy

Every glorious rise to the top involves a competitor residing below. In a sea of painful images that represented Armagh’s latest heartbreak, one pierced like a dagger.

Paddy McBrearty in the heart of the stand about to accept the Anglo-Celt, while Kieran McGeeney was metres away slumped against the wall in the tunnel below.

His view was endless green and gold. Eventually, he mustered the strength to walk through it and offer gracious congratulations. The Donegal players lining the steps reached down to accept them. All day long, little separated their crushing exchanges. Yet, through those cracks, Armagh fell to emerge in another world.

Later McGeeney would do what he usually does in these terribly familiar situations.

He spoke about close calls, two committed sides, and the exaggerated difference in their post-game verdicts.

Perhaps some will paint such a plain picture, but few true football devotees think like this. Most appreciate the margins. Winning doesn’t always triumph over everything, and that’s no solace to Armagh. In situations like this, it does.

It is sometimes tediously pointed out that, technically, a penalty shootout isn’t a defeat.

Try telling that to the hollowed orange bodies making their way off over two-and-a-half hours after Martin McNally threw the ball up.

Every man and woman in their huddle stayed standing as Shane McPartlan’s sudden death penalty was denied by Shaun Patton. Fall? They’ve fallen three times before. Galway. Derry. Monaghan. Now Donegal. Falling would only exacerbate profuse hurt. Sisyphus himself is extending sympathies.

Sure, Donegal didn’t win the match. However, they persisted long enough to ensure they wouldn’t lose it either.

They ran with abandon. At times they ran into dead-ends. They ran until they met bodies and early on, they even ran the ball away.

Ryan McHugh, Ciaran Thompson, Ciaran Moore and Daire Ó Baoill all failed to find a team-mate with a handpass in the opening quarter. They endured a run of five misses in a row in the second half to fall four down with 20 minutes remaining. Patrick McBreaty popped to Niall O’Donnell, who unleashed a screamer and they stormed back into the tie again.

Fittingly, they stormed the field afterwards too.

For Jim McGuinness, all of that will only add to the prestige. For Armagh, it worsens the trauma.

Clones does strange things to you. First, it confounds with a wonderous mix of bottles and 99s, cars seemingly abandoned in any available meadow.

Quickly it overwhelms, discard the layers en route up the sunbaked hill to St Tiernach’s Park and scramble for them as thunder, lightning and rain pours down midway through the first half.

Finally, it diminishes all within reach. The world started to shrink, until there are only two sides left. McGuinness and McGeeney. Armagh and Donegal. A point and a point. A penalty taker and a goalkeeper. A winner and a loser.

And it’s so close. Pit of the stomach, knees thwacking, chest pounding, clenched fists and jaws sort of stuff.

As the screw turns, both managers shift further towards the sideline. Right to the periphery of the white strip. In extra-time, McGuinness looks to the erected screen to watch a replay of the foul on Jarly Óg Burns. He can’t comprehend it. He can’t accede to it. The Donegal manager roared and spun in fury. The interval came soon after.

McGuinness continued to swirl all over the field until he manifested in the middle of the huddle, suddenly a beacon of calm. They won the throw-in, worked the ball to Peadar Mogan, and he fired over his second point.

By the time penalties arrived, the sickening realisation of how it might unfold was starting to dawn on the Armagh camp. Selector Kieran Donaghy struggled to watch. The narrative was already starting to take hold.

McGuinness’ fourth Ulster title from five attempts. The comeback bearing fruit already, filled with so many flavours that prompt reminders of his first reign.

What really is a messiah anyway? A mortal minus all of the doubt. Utterly convinced from the very first moment of what they can and will achieve. For there to be a messiah, there must also be a nadir. Donegal’s was a lowly 2023 campaign. 

A manager dismissed, relegation, an Ulster quarter-final defeat against a Division 3 outfit, an eight-point exit against their rivals Tyrone in the preliminary quarter-final.

At this point it is worth noting that this Donegal are levels above his previous edition. Several already possess Ulster medals.

This return wasn’t about creation, it was about instilling conviction. No better man. This is an individual who walked around the dressing room back in 2011 and told every single player that they would be Ulster champions. Did he do the same this time?

Not quite, said man-of-the-match contender Mogan.

“We never actually talked about the Ulster championship for the first while,” he said. “Really only talked about Derry for ages. It was all about Derry.” 

Of course, it was. That was a means to an end. Derry. Tyrone. Armagh. Each with their own significance, an awesome hat-trick that exceeds any of the manager’s previous provincial successes.

So, what if it was on penalties, took two extra-times, and is more complex than the comeback story suggests? The story is what matters.