‘Counties need at least €1million to stay in the hunt until September’
THE price of an All-Ireland? Paddy McBrearty puts it a cool million euro. In the break between National League and today’s Ulster Championship first round clash with Antrim, Rory Gallagher and his Donegal team took off for the bright lights and big city feel of New York.
They set up base camp in Yonkers, a cab ride from Gaelic Park, and played New York in a couple of challenges to give the full squad a run-out. But this wasn’t as much about football as about business. The training camp and transatlantic team bonding trip doubled as an important fundraiser for the year ahead with a golf outing and an auction ticking the necessary financial boxes as Donegal look to back up their All-Ireland credentials with the war chest that is needed to stay in the black till September.
‘Dublin drew the benchmark with what they have and the support systems they have,’ says McBrearty, ‘and I suppose Kerry are up there with them. It is tough on counties but it seems to be now that you need a lot of money, near close to a million euro looking at team expenses at the end of the year. To be competing in September that it is benchmark of where you need to be at whereas 10 or 15 years ago that would have been unimaginable for a GAA team to be handing out that sort of money.’
How important finance is? One of the most cultured left-footers in the game who lifted the Sam Maguire Cup in 2012 in his Leaving Certificate year says that milestone success under Jim McGuinness wouldn’t have happened without the finance behind it.
‘No definitely not. I remember after every round after the Ulster semifinal we were going away for three or four nights to training camps which takes a serious amount of money. When you are meeting up four or five nights a week the expenses involved… it cost a lot of money to have a training session, particularly in Donegal because it is such a big county. To get every player to Convoy for training costs thousands, never mind the food and whatever else on top of that. It’s a machine that needs a lot of money but thankfully there are a lot of Donegal people doing well and very happy to support the team.’
Togging out against Antrim will always evoke memories of that landmark day in 2011 against the same opposition. With the minor grade changing to Under 17, McBrearty may well go down in history as being the last player to play minor and senior Championship on the same day, an illustration of his talent and the leap of faith taken by management.
‘The last one before me was Benny Coulter. Any day you make your debut is always a good day. But [I had] mixed emotions really – lost the minor game and then came on and made my senior debut.’
That was the first sighting of Donegal’s mould-breaking defensive system which contributed to a dour, low-scoring affair, prompting a conversation on The Sunday Game as to whether a Man-of-the-Match award should even be handed out, a disrespect that resonated within the squad.
‘I think Jim mentioned it after the Cavan game that year. Definitely it hurt a lot of players in the squad and added fuel to the fire and it was motivation to be honest.’ If turning Tyrone over in the Ulster semi-final was ‘massive… a big statement’, it was all brand new for a school-going 17-year-old. ‘I suppose I wasn’t even legally allowed into the night club that night but I got in somehow. It was good. I met up with my old mates who were out that night. It was definitely special times.
‘Then beating Kildare in the quarterfinal in Croke Park and then we should have beaten Dublin in the semi-final. We probably had the game in our hands but let it slip.’
The following summer was even more surreal given that most Leaving Certificate students spend their summer worrying about the exam results whereas the Kilcar forward was preparing for an All-Ireland campaign.
‘It was fairly hectic and difficult at times. The week before the Leaving Certificate Donegal went away on a training camp down to Johnstown House [in Kildare]. Obviously I couldn’t go because of the Leaving. [I] did the Leaving and finished on the Friday and we played Derry the next day. I finished my exam and went to the hotel where I met up with the team – didn’t see any of the players or management in the two weeks leading up to the game.
‘It was difficult but once I got the exam out of the way it was full focus on the Championship. When the results came out I was very happy, though I never got to celebrate them like every other student or my mates.’
Yet that September he was able to celebrate an All-Ireland.
This afternoon at MacCumhaill Park in Ballybofey, he comes full circle.