A bit of a weird one, but I thought it was worth sharing. Last night, I dreamt I was walking a country road in one of the border counties, maybe Fermanagh. I ran into Donegal mananger Jim McGuinness, who was walking on his own. We talked a bit about the Dublin match. I asked him if he regretted his tactical approach to playing Dublin. "I have no regrets whatsoever. We had to play Dublin on our own terms,' he said He gave me a bearhug and then we went our separate ways.
Yesterday's match was a poor spectacle, but to hear the likes of Tony Davis discussing gaelic football like it some sort of socialist ideal is ludicrous. And the talk that McGuinness's tactics let down the Donegal supporters and players is bullshit as well. The Donegal people I saw around town last night seemed to be enjoying themselves. We'd all love our counties to field 15 swashbuckling, ginger-haired Kerrymen, but I'd say both the Donegal players and supporters would trade a dour, defensive, nearly groundbreaking performance on a Sunday in late August in Croker over a wide-open qualifier defeat to a Midlands county in Cavan in late June.
on the Kildare match deserve a final airing:
“People are very rarely ‘alive’, you know. And for those 20 minutes in extra time what was going through my mind was: ‘this is unbelievable. Because those boy are in the thick of this now. Every moment counts and they are living on the edge. And it would be brilliant if they can come through this and win but even if the don’t, this is going to be a great life experience’.
“Because in that moment, they were living in the fullest sense. The atmosphere that evening was as raw as I have ever felt. And the lights coming on made it too. It was all kind of magical.”
