Getting big bounce from underage success

GAELIC GAMES:Former under-21 Paddy McGrath explains to KEITH DUGGANhow Donegal's progress is due to the senior players responding to Jim McGuinness

PADDY McGRATH is one of the flush of youngsters who landed in the Donegal dressingroom when Jim McGuinness assembled his first panel in late 2010. Like Mark McHugh, he graduated from McGuinness’s Under-21 team which lost the 2010 All-Ireland final to Dublin when Michael Murphy’s win-or-bust last-minute penalty crashed against the crossbar.

Coming in the middle of a turbulent few seasons and a downright crisis at senior level, it didn’t go unnoticed that Donegal had come within a kick of a ball of winning an All-Ireland title. So the more senior players were curious about how they had done it.

“It was a good way of getting to know the senior lads too. It gave us something to bond over and we felt as if we were equal. We would have looked up the older boys coming up and the fact that they were fit to chat to us as normal helped us to settle into the thing. We had a winning mentality from the start. It was bred into us. So we went through Ulster reasonably well and we were winning and we were confident.

“We got into an All-Ireland final and didn’t quite get there and so a lot of players then went into the senior team and that was in our head. But we have that experience and a lot of the older boys were asking questions about the under-21s and we were telling them about Jim and what he has done and they bought into that pretty quickly. They could see what he achieved.

“It was something that we wanted to bounce from. We felt we wanted to put the record straight. It was very disappointing at the time.”

In comparable to most Donegal players, McGrath’s portfolio is dreamlike. He has played for two seasons and has two Ulster medals and now has an All-Ireland final to look forward to. Even if he isn’t starstruck by the elevated stage, he is grounded enough to appreciate it.

“We are spoilt, us younger boys, he admits.”

After Donegal won the Division Two final in Croke Park, he bumped into Damian Diver from Ardara, the attacking wing back who was his idol when he was growing up. Diver congratulated him and told him it was great to have a national medal.

“I said, ‘ah it’s only a league medal. We want to push on.’ And he said: ‘it’s one more than I have.’ And that brought it home to me about how much any medal means and Damian Diver worked so hard – he was Donegal’s greatest for many a year and never got one. So I feel blessed.”

While McGrath agrees that the blend of the under-21 team with the more senior players has worked well, he rejects the idea that the youth branch has been instrumental in rejuvenating the senior men. Instead, he feels that the senior players, from Colm McFadden back to Neil McGee, responded to McGuinness in much the same way as the under-21s did.

“They knew the quality was in the team and just a few of them thought it was time to step up to the mark and show that. It has been a great couple of years – winning Ulster and getting to an All-Ireland semi-final was a big step forward for Donegal football. And then this year to put the titles back to back was brilliant. And obviously being in a final is where you want to be.”

McGrath’s high-octane missions from his corner to contribute – and often initiate – Donegal’s counterattacks have become a notable feature of the team’s play this year. Like Frank McGlynn, he likes to travel.

“I haven’t clocked up as much as Frank,” he protests.

The attacking emphasis has done much to silence that wall of criticism generated by the ultra-cautious approach Donegal took last year.

McGrath was unbothered by the complaints last year and is similarly uninterested in the new-found praise heaped on his team. As he sees it, Donegal are still a work in progress.

“We still have our feet firmly on the ground. A lot of people put us down as a defensive side last year. But we had something to build on and I feel we are as good going forward as we are in defence. When it doesn’t happen for you, you have to question why.

“A lot of people said we would have beaten Dublin that day if we had pushed on and it was something Jim and Rory (Gallagher) had to take a look at.”

As a defender, however, his primary interest is in what the opposition does on the scoreboard and he has been highly impressed by the scores Mayo have posted, most notably against Dublin.

“Nineteen points is brave tipping,” he says, sounding now like a traditional mind-your-patch defender. Mayo are clearly a very, very good side. We know that. And we just need to knuckle down and make sure we prepare rightly for them.”