McGuinness giving Donegal belief again in 2024

Jim McGuinness has brought a bif of the swagger back to Donegal football, according to Peadar Mogan, as they prepare for Sunday’s All-Ireland quarter-final against Louth.

The Tír Chonaill men will hope to put the modern nadir of 2023 firmly behind them at Croke Park as they look to make the last four for the first time in a decade.

McGuinness was in charge for their last quarter-final win when they beat Armagh in 2014 and his return has heralded a change in fortunes already for the county team. While they failed to win a game in Ulster last year, and saw their season ended by Tyrone in the preliminary quarter-finals, 2024 has been a different story.

Promotion from Division 2 of the Allianz League was swiftly followed by victory over Division 1 champions – and back-to-back Ulster winners – Derry. They followed it by putting Tyrone away, before reclaiming the Anglo-Celt Cup with a penalty shootout triumph over Armagh for a first provincial victory in half a decade.

Their only defeat of the year came against a goal-scoring Cork side at Páirc Uí Rínn but wins over the Red Hand and Clare either side of it assured them of top spot in Group 3 and with it, the most direct passage through to the last eight of the All-Ireland SFC.

And for Mogan, the big difference this season has been how McGuinness has managed to get the players’ heads right.

“He’s given everyone a huge lift,” Mogan said after picking up the PwC GAA/GPA Footballer of the Month award for May.

“He’s got people talking about Donegal football again. It’s the belief he instills and he has a brilliant way of coming across.

“He’s brought excitement back to the county which is something we’ve been missing over the last few years.

“It’s the conviction he spoke with [the first time we met him], the passion. He cares about Donegal so much because he was a player, he was the manager before and he is a fan.

“He’s done it all with Donegal and you can see how much it means to him.”

On how the style of football has changed this year, Mogan adds: “He’s put us all in a position that we can drive forward and he’s allowing us to express ourselves.

“We’re playing faster and with more energy than we would have had in previous years.”

The one blot on Donegal’s copybook in 2024 has been that defeat to Cork in game two of the group stages.

On a sweltering day at Páirc Uí Rínn, the Rebels delivered a free flowing performance, with their pace appearing to catch out McGuinness’s men. The Munster men were able to open up the Ulster visitors, hitting them for three goals in a two-point victory.

If there’s ever a good time to lose a game of football in the summer months, that might have been it.

And for Mogan, the mission has been to try to learn the lessons and prevent a repeat before July is out.

“A lot of it was down to errors we made but a lot of them were forced by Cork,” he points out.

“[There was] tenacious tackling, especially from their forwards. They were very deserving of their win. There were good learnings for us in terms of some of the things we did and the errors that we made.

“We coughed up one or two more goal chances against them that they could have taken. They could have put more on the scoreboard.

“That’s what a loss is for, the learning. You watch the video. Even if you win a game you can still take learnings because you might have conceded a goal chance and you think about ways to stop it from happening again.

“It was good that we took those learnings but it was brutal to watch because of the way we conceded the goals but hopefully they won’t happen again.”

While McGuinness’s return has been a big talking point in this year’s football championship, the job Louth manager Ger Brennan has done has also been noteworthy.

Taking over from the legendary Mickey Harte, many felt that the Wee County would do well to match last year’s form in his rookie season as a senior inter-county manager.

But the team has been even stronger in 2024, giving Dublin a proper challenge in the Leinster final before reaching the quarter-finals for the first time with last weekend’s victory over Cork.

The form hasn’t surprised Mogan, with Brennan bringing the qualities he had as a player into the manager’s dugout.

“He was a fantastic player and now he’s a brilliant manager. We played them in the league and you could see the physicality of them.

“The tactical awareness they have, they’re a really tough team to play against. They’ve a lovely mix and size and pace; all their big men can run.

“He’s done a brilliant job. They really put it up to Dublin for large parts of the Leinster final. They played a good game against Cork so they’ve a good vein of form coming into it.

“They’ve got height around midfield in Bevan Duffy and Tommy Durnin, and one of the best inside forwards in the country. Behind Dublin, they’ve scored the most goals in the [league and] championship so they’re going to be goal-hungry.

“They’re a huge energy team and they feed off that running game that they have. They’re riding the crest of a wave at the moment the support for them is going to be absolutely phenomenal, especially after the result they had last week.

“They’ll be coming all guns blazing and we’ve got to be ready to match it.”

Watch the All-Ireland Football Championship quarter-finals, Donegal v Louth (1.15pm) and Kerry v Derry (3.15pm), on Sunday from 12.45pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app and listen to commentary on Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1