McGuinness saw club conflict linked to Donegal success
NO INTER-COUNTY manager of recent vintage plunged himself deeper into the muddy trenches of club v county conflict as Jim McGuinness. Through his four years as Donegal boss, McGuinness regarded his as a war of necessity rather than one of choice.
In his autobiography, ‘Until Victory Always’, McGuinness isolated the “key moment” at which he felt Donegal’s 2013 campaign had been compromised “when our own county board held a fixtures forum in early January and decided to play the club championship during the Ulster and All-Ireland championship.”
McGuinness’s frustration was two-fold.
Firstly, that the county board had proposed and agreed a set of club fixtures that ran concurrently with Donegal’s attempt to retain Sam Maguire. But secondly, that he wasn’t invited to – or even made aware of – said meeting.
The practice of inter-county managers directly addressing club delegates in their natural habitat isn’t a particularly common one.
Most communicate regularly with one or two officials but remain broadly detached from the body politic of county administration.
During his reign, McGuinness delivered a bi-annual report to club representatives, frequently using these opportunities to influence decision-makers.
It would have been interesting to eavesdrop on some of the phone calls that passed between county board chairmen and their managers over the weekend following Croke Park’s volte-face over punishment for fresh breaches of the club window training ban.
By anecdotal consensus, most county setups have engaged in some form of training since the end of Covid lockdown. By similar concord, the vast majority have now returned those players to their clubs ahead of the July 17 resumption of competitive activity. Invariably, some were intending to do so anyway, having planned a block of training before the club restart.
Others are known to have already come under pressure from the county’s clubs prior to last Friday’s U-turn by Croke Park.
It’s entirely possible that some teams will continue to train through the club window. And there may be managers who justify this by speculating that rivals are doing the same.
But acceptance of this restriction now appears widespread and as Clare football boss Colm Collins asserted on these pages last week, it’s not wise to “tar everybody with the same brush” in this regard.
Still, it’s unlikely that there are many members of the inter-county management fraternity who see the wisdom in players being prevented from training collectively after their club involvement has ended, before the September 14 inter-county restart date.
Fewer again will expect much credit for obeying restrictions on training if their team underperforms in the GAA’s inter-county winter Olympics later this year.
None of this tension is new or in any way surprising. Any concession to inter-county managers is effectively a tax on clubs.
Acquiescence to clubs is inconvenience to county managers.
Croke Park’s attempts to legislate have, until now at least, been treated as those GAA rules that are acceptable to break so long as nobody draws any attention to themselves.
The example of McGuinness in Donegal isn’t applicable here.
In 2013, he went to war with elements of a county board who had the autonomy to consent to his wishes and, as McGuinness saw it, serve his team’s needs. Nobody was in breach of any GAA rule.
But the perception of one faction receiving priority over another forms the basic jist here too.
The Donegal clubs’ refusal to yield that year was interpreted by McGuinness as a power-grab which he felt ultimately cost the county team the chance to do themselves justice as All-Ireland champions.
“And it destroyed us,” he maintained. “They destroyed us.”
The previous year, 2012, McGuinness himself had successfully made “two direct pleas to the club delegates asking to have our club games put back”.
He sold this on his contention that Donegal “had a chance to do something exceptional” that summer.
“I believed Donegal could go back-to-back in Ulster for the first time ever, and go on to win the AllIreland.”
So it would prove. The victims of this scheduling were predictable.
In another chapter of his book, McGuinness recalled the subsequent club championship games being played “deep in mid-winter”.
“It wasn’t a perfect situation for the clubs,” he admitted. “But we did have the Sam Maguire. That vindicated the decision.”
When it comes to winning AllIrelands, the end has always justified the means.