Gallagher’s input was worthy of greater respect
In time, Jim McGuinness may revisit his judgement of former No 2
HONESTY is not always the best policy, but it is undoubtedly the most interesting one.
Candour can infuriate people. Because he spoke the truth as he saw it in his autobiography, the story of Jim McGuinness was one of the most successful books of last year.
It was easy to deduce that certainty was one of the strengths of his management: when McGuinness knew something, it stayed known. His opinions were not easily altered.
Before this year is out, Jim McGuinness might have to revisit some of the trenchant observations that made his story so interesting. In fact, the modern, mesmerising story of Donegal football could be scrutinised under a fresh, fascinating light by the close of 2016.
McGuinness writes in ‘Until Victory Always’ about the journey home from Croke Park after defeat to Mayo in the 2013 All-Ireland quarter-final. Rory Gallagher, then his assistant, ‘had been trying to convince me that we needed to rebuild from the beginning now and that a lot of the senior boys had had their day’.
These are presumably the veterans who Gallagher inherited in the winter of 2014 when he replaced McGuinness, a year after their relationship had ended in rancour.
By revealing those details, McGuinness was not making life any easier for his successor. But the decision of those same veterans to stay faithful to Donegal under Gallagher – and the retirement reversal of Rory Kavanagh this year – speaks to a good relationship between the current manager and his players.
McGuinness’ claim that Gallagher was signalling the end for the veterans had, though, the potential to create problems for the latter.
The account McGuinness gave of how the relationship with Gallagher ended eventually prompted a statement from Gallagher, but he had done well to hold his tongue until then. In the book, McGuinness recalls a conversation in which he told Gallagher – with whom, he says, he once had a relationship where ‘both of our opinions counted’ – that ‘if we were to continue, I had to assume absolute control’. Gallagher asked to think about this new arrangement. ‘I said to him that I didn’t know why he needed to think about anything,’ writes McGuinness.
The inalienable conviction of McGuinness is brilliantly captured here, but that story leaves him vulnerable to the charge of unreasonableness. It is astonishing that a man he credited with helping to build Donegal into All-Ireland champions is reduced to being told that he would, if he stayed working with McGuinness, operate in reduced circumstances, where his expertise would be compromised by the manager taking complete control.
If the exchange between them was as McGuinness remembered it then Gallagher had no choice but to leave. And given the blazing start to the season made by Donegal this spring, there is growing evidence now that McGuinness was wrong to treat his No 2 as he did.
Gallagher is keeping his most durable and important players sharp; the McGee brothers, Frank McGlynn, Christy Toye, Neil Gallagher and Michael Murphy have years of hard training, but they are playing with marvellous energy.
Colm McFadden and Karl Lacey are being carefully nurtured, presumably with a view to ensuring they are viable options come the summer. As important as any of these strategies, though, is Gallagher’s tending of new talent.
A minor team that reached the 2014 All-Ireland final provide an obvious harvest, with Stephen McBrearty and Micheál Carroll among the prized picks in that crop. But Ciarán Thompson and Eoin McHugh, the two players tipped to push hardest for starting places as the Championship nears, are proof
that young talent in the county is not confined to one group.
It will take unprecedented success for any manager’s record to challenge McGuinness as Donegal’s best. He transformed a county and-changed football for a generation. He deserves to be remembered as an innovator on the scale of Mick O’Dwyer or Mickey Harte.
However, as his book illustrated, his enormous personality and cussed self-belief were central to his project. Gallagher suffered as a result and the danger was Donegal would too, when McGuinness left. Many wondered how the county would survive at the elite level.
A gush of retirements was predicted but never materialised, for which Gallagher deserves credit. The team ran out of road last sum- mer and we wondered if the departures predicted in 2014 would happen now.
Instead, the praetorian guard stayed loyal for one more campaign. The fusion of their experience with the zip and ambition of younger players has made Donegal the team of 2016 so far. They are expected to win in Tralee today, and they have the look of a squad hungry for early silverware.
Few expected the team to reassemble itself so effectively. Fewer believed Rory Gallagher, so clinically dispensed with by his predecessor, could turn a group that looked wrecked last August into this bold new force.
His success is challenging easy assumptions, and the cold judgement of Jim McGuinness.