Jim McGuinness has reflected on his first All-Ireland experience with Donegal, and revealed that the players took inspiration from Olympic boxing gold medallist Michael Carruth.
McGuinness, writing in his weekly column with The Irish Times, was previewing this weekend’s All-Ireland final between Mayo and Dublin, and took a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
The Celtic sports psychologist was a teenager on Brian McEniff’s Donegal team when they made their historic breakthrough against Dublin in 1992.
However, McGuinness recalled all the players listening to Carruth’s Olympic Final fight on the radio in their cars before a training session in Donegal Town – just a week before their All-Ireland final clash with the Dubs.
The Glenties native said they took inspiration from Carruth’s incredible performance – and that the training session that followed had an edge to it that he’d never seen before.
McGuinness wrote, “This weekend took me back to my first All-Ireland experience in 1992, as a teenager on the Donegal team that met Dublin – who were huge favourites. The whole country thought they’d win it. That was an Olympic summer as well and a day that is etched in my memory is the Saturday a week before the final when Michael Carruth was boxing for his gold medal.
“Brian McEniff pushed back our training session so the boys could listen to the fight on the radio. And I have this memory of a line of cars parked at the Four Masters pitch and all the players inside them, spellbound by the commentary. All the doors were open in all cars so everyone was connected to each other and to the moment. It was a gorgeous morning. It felt like a really significant sporting moment for Ireland and it was a very emotional, moving sort of experience to listen to it.
“And it meant that everyone was wired going onto the field for training. This was during the last few training sessions and it meant that the senior guys were pushing for places. Gaelic games are all about the team, yes. But there are times when the individual instinct takes over. Boys were desperate to play. This was a team full of great friends who had never been to an All-Ireland final before. They didn’t know if they’d be back. So there was a feeling that this was a once-in-a-lifetime game. And that morning, in the A versus B game, there was an edge that I had never seen between these boys before.
Brian Murray and Anthony Molloy went at it a few times. Squared up and boxed. A few rows broke out between Joyce McMullan and Donal Reid. And then came this challenge from John Joe Doherty on Declan Bonner. The pair of them were going for a ball and John Joe came like a train and he absolutely flattened Declan. What I will always remember is Declan lying still and John Joe not even turning. He just went back to the corner and stood with his hands on his hips staring straight up the field.
“I am not suggesting that Donegal won that All-Ireland there and then. But I do believe that a different mentality came into that squad that morning. As it turned out, Martin Shovlin had to relinquish his place on the morning of the final with a neck injury and Brian went with John Joe. And John Joe played very well too. So he made all those weeks in his life count. They all did. They knew they had to make it count. Boys like Matt Gallagher, Noel Hegarty, Manus Boyle: there was this realisation: when will we be back in a final? Mayo need to make it count this weekend against Dublin.”
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