Fearless Donegal ready to shift axis of power

SIDELINE CUT:The traditional powerhouses of Gaelic football will have to respond to Donegal's stunning success, but replicating Jim McGuinness's success won't be easy, writes KEITH DUGGAN

IT IS SIX DAYS now since Jim McGuinness, the faith healer from Glenties, completed one of the great GAA managerial coups, and yet still the penny hasn’t dropped: the best of Donegal has yet to be seen.

You can interpret Donegal’s All-Ireland run any which way you like, but one of the most frightening conclusions is that only Tyrone gave them a real game – a match in which they were pushed from beginning to end.

You could also argue they navigated arguably the toughest run of All-Ireland opposition ever – Cavan, Derry, Tyrone, Down, Kerry, Cork, Mayo – while only playing well in patches. The common theory that the way Donegal train and work means they “can’t last” seems spoken more in hope than desperation. The beauty of the way Donegal play now is that it makes it easy for decent footballers to step into the breach.

In fact, the All-Ireland final is worth rewatching just for the performance of one of its unsung heroes: Anthony Thompson. All afternoon, the Naomh Conaill man seemed to shepherd the play exactly to his liking and moved through the fare in that unhurried, three-quarters pace style of his.

At one stage, it was noted he had managed to drift through the heart of the Mayo cover and was loitering in front of David Clarke’s goal, a de facto full forward doing what good front men do: keeping quiet as a church mouse and waiting to be spotted.

Rory Kavanagh attempted to cut a ball inside but it fell short and the chance disappeared. But what was interesting was the way Thompson had started the move by drifting across the frontier of the Donegal defence and jumping to gobble up a ball a millisecond before it reached Mayo hands before calmly reigniting the Donegal attack. Then, he followed the play, trailing it before making his move.

And this habit of wandering into brilliant attacking positions is nothing new. It was highlighted during the Ulster championship by Aaron Kernan, a guest on The Sunday Game, in what was one of the sharpest moments of analysis in the season.

All Donegal’s future opponents would have seen that television show; all were aware of what the wing back did. And yet he kept doing it. In fact, if you watch a re-run of the All-Ireland final with Thompson in mind, you begin to wonder if there can only be one of the fellow. He is a bit like Zelig – he keeps popping up.

An example was when Neil Gallagher finished what was Donegal’s last and best point, it was the corner back Frank McGlynn who was there to handpass the ball into the midfielder’s path. But if you look behind McGlynn, Thompson was the player who flicked the pass to McGlynn; another option, another distraction for an already addled defence.

Thompson made his debut for Donegal back in 2006. He never made many waves nationally. Last year, he was merely good, in a quiet way. This year, he has been subtly brilliant. How has this happened? Is it because McGuinness, instead of trying to make players fit the game, is creating a game to fit the players he has?

For instance, it has often been commented that Mark McHugh was regarded as nothing special in his earlier days. His father Martin noted on The Sunday Game that he didn’t make the Sigerson team in college.

But the younger McHugh clearly has an exceptional intuition for the game to match his athleticism. With Donegal, his strengths have been allowed to flourish and he is a front runner for the Player of the Year awards.

One of the more amusing contentions is that next year, other counties are going to play “like” Donegal. But how? Will McGuinness or Rory Gallagher go around giving coaching courses?

There has been a lot of vague talk about the “system” which Donegal adopt but precious little attempt to identify what it is. The supposition that all the other contenders will be gunning for Donegal is all very well. But firstly, they have to figure out what they are supposed to be shooting down. The general phrases – “negative tactics”, “cynicism”, “system”, “methodology” – don’t really explain much.

In McGuinness’s tenure, Donegal have been involved in one of the great epic games of recent years (v Kildare 2011); the most notorious game in years (v Dublin 2011); one of the best attacking games in years (v Cork 2012); one of the hardest games in years (v Derry 2012); one of the biggest upsets in years (v Kerry 2012); a must-win league relegation game (v Armagh 2012); and one of the most tactically defined games in years (v Tyrone in 2012).

They have gone from rank outsiders (“This game was so bad it didn’t deserve a man of the match” – Pat Spillane post Antrim 2011) to feverishly hot favourites (All-Ireland final 2012).

So for a team that is supposed to be wedded to a fiercely one-dimensional system, they have managed to win games of a radically different nature.

Joe Brolly, the former Derry star and RTÉ analyst, came away from the Donegal-Derry game like a man who had been given a terrifying glimpse into the future. He wrote a column afterwards in which he correctly prophesied that Donegal would win the All-Ireland, that they had devised a way of playing that was virtually unbeatable.

He called it early and he called it right and there is a sense he has enjoyed the discomfiture that Donegal’s revolution has caused among the establishment counties. But Brolly also felt Donegal sucked teams into a black hole. They don’t.

Donegal create the vacuum but teams disappear all by themselves – they are undone by their own frailties. Donegal have actually expanded the possibilities of the game. They play the game at speed, they come on to perfectly weighted balls running clever angles, they think their way through tight situations, (most notably the fierce midfield press which Mayo employed in the All-Ireland final) and they kick fine scores from play.

It takes a rare combination of skill and selflessness to make a game plan like that work. Very few teams will be able to mimic that – even presuming that they have the coaching prowess to make it work.

The more imaginative coaches won’t be thinking about a way to prevent or copy Donegal but how to advance what has happened over the summer. Talent borrows; genius steals, as they say.

Of course, it is entirely up to Donegal what they do next. Maybe they will be content with another isolated year of splendour and will spend the next two decades sighing about the magic of 2012. Mine eyes have seen the glory and all that: they won’t get any more adoration or feel any better about life than they do just now.

But the likelihood is they would all be too frightened by the thought of returning to their previous state of decent mediocrity. They have the chance for a tilt at greatness and it will be a great surprise if they don’t chase that down with a hunger and discipline that will surpass their current form.

If Donegal have demonstrated anything to other teams anxious to make the breakthrough, it is the importance of fearlessness. They treated Kerry and Cork with no less nor more respect than any other teams and the curious thing was the mythical counties became just that. They did some excellent things and some silly things. And they lost.

You can bet Mickey Harte is already sketching out plans for Tyrone to play through the Donegal framework. It is a safe guess the Red Hand still looms large in the Donegal subconscious. Mayo will come back tougher and smarter. Expect a primal scream from Kildare. The big question concerns how the grand houses of Gaelic football will respond to the general state of rebellion. The championship draw on Thursday will sharpen all minds for next season.

It’s not just the ice cap that is melting.