JIM’S SHOW OF FORCE
McGuinness claims risk of serious injury is too high as Donegal sort out some of their problems
ON AN evening in Carrickon-Shannon when you feared for the game’s soul, Jim McGuinness offered a measure of perspective. While a contest as pig ugly as this one might be hard on the eye — had Peppa’s family access to a lawyer they would sue for defamation by association — we will get over it but the Donegal manager warned that the game is now on a pathway that could end in the kind of tragedy from which there is no coming back.
With Mark McHugh, his injured AllStar forward who faces at least a month on the sidelines after last weekend’s late hit from Stephen Gollogly, very much on his mind, McGuinness hit out at a culture in the game that he alleged has long gone past the point of what is reasonable and safe.
‘I am not happy that we have a player with a busted eardrum. I am not happy he had a major concussion, I am not happy that he has a five-centimetre, not millimetre, tear in his quad muscle as a result of the impact, I am not happy that he spent two nights in hospital and I am not happy that he has missed a full week of work,’ he said.
‘There is a difference between physicality and busted eardrums, concussions and serious leg injuries.
‘We are in a very dangerous position — I would fear that something is going to happen and my biggest fear is a spinal injury or a neck injury.
‘We’re not far away from that happening. It’s going to happen, and I hope that everyone that is involved can live with the consequences because I know I won’t be able to.
‘Mark McHugh’s injury last week was our f ourth concussion in t hree games. I would imagine that Munster or Leinster rugby wouldn’t have that concussion rate,’ claimed the Donegal manager.
Declan Walsh, Frank McGlynn and Ryan Bradley had, prior to McHugh, all suffered from concussion in this year’s Ulster campaign and the Donegal manager’s concern at the heat being brought to bear on some of his main players sparked a row here 27 minutes in, when he rushed to complain to the linesman after Michael Murphy had been dumped to the ground by Laois’s Mark Timmons.
It led to Laois manager Justin McNulty pushing McGuinness away, while the two assistant managers, Donegal’s Rory Gallagher and Laois’s Fergal Byron, both waded in to back up their men.
When the final whistle sounded, there was no traditional post-match handshake between the managers, with McNulty adamant that McGuinness had sought to influence the match official.
‘Jim was just trying to go down and intimidate the linesman on a decision, which he maybe shouldn’t have done. I told him to get back up his own end of the pitch, it’s as simple as that,’ explained McNulty afterwards.
For his part, McGuinness held his hands up and admitted that was exactly what he did — Timmons was subsequently yellow- carded — but he was hardly apologising.
‘Michael Murphy was third-man tackled and I went to the linesman and told him that this is happening every game we play at the minute and was he going to do something about it and in fairness they dealt with it,’ explained McGuinness.
With emotions simmering, you might be under the impression that this fourthround qualifier tie, which sent Donegal into an All-Ireland quarter-final clash with Mayo, was something of a pot-boiler.
It wasn’t because the best thing about it by a distance was the post-match press briefing, and you know you have witnessed something truly awful when you find your joy there.
It was 12 minutes in before Colm McFadden, who showed class and character to bounce back from last weekend’s noshow to lead the way here for the champions, kicked the game’s first point from a free and after 22 minutes, the teams were locked together at 0-1 apiece.
While it can be argued that it takes two to tango and to stink out a football game, it was Laois who primarily reduced the opening half to an exercise in utter tedium.
They played with a two-man attack in Donie Kingston and Ross Munnelly, who were hopelessly outnumbered, but yet with that set-up they still insisted, on occasion, in playing a direct game.
In the first 20 minutes, they kicked four balls over the sideline, a few more over the endline, and the remainder, apart from Munnelly’s 17th-minute point, was swallowed up by the Donegal defence.
McNulty lamented afterwards that they had left their game-plan behind them. ‘We should have been retaining possession, recycling until the guy was in the right position and when we did that we were effective. When we didn’t we looked like amateurs,’ he said.
That ignored the fact that even when they did try and engage a mind-numbing game-plan, they still looked amateurish; their handling and decision-making was so poor that they turned over ball at will.
And what of Donegal? There was little
My biggest fear is a spinal injury or a neck injury
performance-wise that will lift the concern that the champions are a team with a deep-rooted form crisis. They led at the break by 0-5 to 0-1 but had Timmons not dragged the only real goal chance of the game wide in the 20th minute and had David Walsh’s point, which looked wide, not been awarded then they would have trailed at the interval.
But they improved in the second half, as did their opponents, to provide some hint of relief for the 11,123 traumatised watching souls, in the main through the excellence of Frank McGlynn at centre back, where he was well backed-up by the impressive Neil McGee, and also through McFadden, and to a lesser degree Paddy McBrearty, who kicked three points, to lead by double scores (0-10 to 0-5) going into the final quarter.
From there, Laois somehow found a way back. Their running game yielded sufficient joy to see points from Kingston, sub David Conway and Munnelly (free) cut the deficit to two, and when in the 58th minute Kieran Lillis’s driven centre threatened to spill out of Durcan’s fingers, the impossible briefly seemed on.
McFadden provided the contest with some reason, somehow managing to squeeze off a point when he had no right to find the trigger and from there, the champions kicked on.