IT’S ALL CHILD’S PLAY TO EAMONN
GETTING to grips with Sean Quigley was quite literally child’s work for Eamonn McGee earlier this month.
There are not too many full-backs that have come into contact with the big Fermanagh full-forward who can make that boast, but then not everyone had to put down a post-match week like the one that has left the 32year old veteran defender still glowing.
Forty-eight hours after he limited the Fermanagh danger man to a single point, he witnessed his partner, Joanne, give birth to their first child, Daisy.
‘It was a bit of craic last week, first contending with Sean Quigley on the Sunday and then on the Tuesday night giving Joanne a hand when she was giving birth so I don’t know what the worse situation was.
‘It was tight going. I will never complain about being under pressure again!’
He has much to laugh about on and off the field these days.
‘They are home from hospital now so there are big changes. It is probably a bad time of year for it but we knew that coming into it. Things have been good, all is positive. It is all change but it is good change,’ he smiles.
And some things have stayed the same too, which also is for the better.
His form this spring had dipped so far south that his future on the team was a matter for open debate, and hardly an eyebrow was raised when their one-time defensive pillar was not named on the starting 15 against Fermanagh.
It turned out that Donegal manager Rory Gallagher was blowing some smoke as McGee has become a virtual specialist in man-marking the principal target-man in the opposition forward’s line. Going without him was never an option.
He has made the journey with such ease from being an orthodox wing-back to a defensive enforcer that he became a key building block in the team that Jim McGuinness built to win the All-Ireland in 2012.
His form in the Fermanagh game served as a reminder — one that will be noted by Monaghan’s Kieran Hughes, who he is likely to track in this evening’s Ulster semi-final — that he is a big game player.
‘Even though I did not have a great League, it was just that I did not have that steady run of training behind me.
‘It is when you have Championship training behind you that you should be shining and thankfully I peaked at the right time,’ reflects McGee.
That he bounced back so strong after being written off — he was touted as one of a number of Donegal players who might have retired after last year’s Championship exit to Mayo — is a measure of his mental strength.
He was neither bothered nor enraged by it.
‘You are coming to a certain age when you have a bad game or get beaten that people are inevitably going to say, “this is the end”.
‘They were saying that about the Tyrone team of the last decade, saying that about Conor Gormley, Philip Jordan among others, saying “that’s the end of them, that’s the end of them” but they were able to stick it out.
‘When you arrive at a certain stage in your career and you have one bad game, the tendency is to write you off. You are always being questioned.
‘It does not really bother me in terms of saying that I am going to go out and prove such and such, and say that he is a b ****** s for saying that.
‘It is better to ask “why is he saying that, what are his motives”.
‘There is nothing that is going to be said that is not going to make me feel bad or not want to train harder to prove a point.
‘I train hard because I want to get the best out of myself. That is the way I look at it,’ insists McGee.
He knows, though, why people joined the dots at the end of last summer and thought that he might walk.
He has squeezed so much from the last six years from a football career, that in its early stages was sabotaged by a fudged vision and lapsed discipline, that he has long gone past the point of redemption.
On a personal level, the awareness that his life was about to change by becoming a father could have made it an easy decision to justify to himself, but the fire still burns far too fiercely to let go just yet. Or for that matter, any time soon.
‘Joe Kernan actually gave me a call up to the International Rules last year. It was the first time in my whole career that I got that call so I said initially I am going to give this a lash now.
‘But because I knew that there was another year in me, I had to be selfish here, think of Joanne and realise that there is going to be busy times later on in the year so I said to Joe it didn’t really suit so I pulled away from it with that in mind.
‘The easy thing, and a lot of people ask this about the Donegal players, is why don’t you ride off into the sunset with your All-Ireland.
‘But the thing about it is that I am not satisfied with that.
‘I look back at 2014 as one of the biggest regrets of my football career. I would like to back in a few years’ time and say that there were a few more AlIrelands there.’