Working for Manchester United Foundation 'rewarding' for Donegal captain

Michael Langan believes Kerry's previous experience of All-Ireland finals was key in their victory over Donegal last July

Donegal joint-captain Michael Langan works for the Manchester United Foundation at Rosses Community School in Dungloe. Pic: Seb Daly/Sportsfile

Those wondering about Donegal's motivation in this Sunday's National Football League Division 1 final against Kerry should look at the roll of honour for a hint. It's 19 years since they last won the top tier decider. They've only got two All-Irelands. A national title would be highly valued in the county.

"To add another national league title in Croke Park would be great and we'll go down there with the intention to win," said Donegal midfielder Michael Langan.

"If we win it, unreal, great. If we don't, we have a huge game in the championship against Down in a couple of weeks' time and we'll move on to that with the learnings."

Lessons are all Donegal had to take from last year's All-Ireland final defeat to the Kingdom. Langan said nothing Kerry did tactically surprised them. Though he did not personally experience nerves, he believes the Kingdom's advantage was their big game experience. 

"Kerry probably benefited from being in a couple of finals before that," said Langan.

"They played the occasion very well. Kerry got off to a great start. The thing we talked about afterwards, we got off to such a bad start. They brought a serious level of aggression and intensity and we didn't match that in the first 15-20 minutes. We probably left ourselves with too much to do, too much of a lead to claw back. 

"We made a fist of it there in the second half but Kerry kept us at arm's length. Kerry probably got more two-pointers than we did. That's something we are looking at. It's obviously a tough experience, but we just have to try and take the learnings from it and move forward."

Just over a month after that defeat to Kerry, Langan began working for the Manchester United Foundation at Rosses Community School in Dungloe. What he does is "rewarding" and "quite broad". He works on a one-to-one basis with students, sets up workshops and sporting sessions. The aim is to make life in the school as easy for them as possible. 

"Sometimes there's kids that can't stay concentrated for the main classes of the day," Langan explained.

"You take them out for a class. You might be doing a bit of PE with them, doing a bit of gym work with them. You might be doing some extra resource classes with them. We've set up some different workshops around next move events with Ulster University and Derry and the courses that they have available. We set up different workshops with companies to come in and talk to our students about jobs that might be available down the line.

"I run a Street Red session. It's one evening in a week after school for kids in the area to come in and we play football for an hour after school. It's just trying to make their school year as enjoyable as you can and to try and help them through it.

"It's a great connection we have here (with Manchester United). We do different trips where we send students across to Manchester. We've had several different groups go over to Old Trafford."

Being Donegal joint-captain probably helps when he's trying to get a message across. 

"Maybe I'm better at the Gaelic skills than the soccer skills," he said, "but I give it a go anyway."