Hugh McFadden appreciates the values of the hard graft.
After all, his hard work has begun to pay off.
Under Declan Bonner, McFadden has been installed as Donegal’s vice captain this year and captained the team from winter time until Michael Murphy’s return to action in the spring.
McFadden doesn’t mind rolling the sleeves up and doesn’t want anyone to have to, as he puts it, shovel his shit.
Jim McGuinness gave McFadden his Ulster Championship debut as a substitute in a 2015 game against Armagh.
In 2013, McFadden was with Sligo Rovers and was part of the extended squad when Sligo Rovers played Molde in the Champions League.
The hairs stood when Tony Britton and George Frideric Handel’s Champions League Anthem rang out at the Showgrounds, but it will be goosebumps of a different kind tomorrow as McFadden heads for the trenches with Donegal.
When he was drafted into the Donegal U21s by Maxi Curran and Rory Gallagher, he’d a lot of work to do having missed out on three years of Gaelic football.
“The decision making skills and understanding of what to do in a game just weren’t at the level they should have been at for me, and I was bringing a lot of soccer habits into the game too,” he said in an interview after his return.
“I had a lot to learn because I was coming in a very raw player without a definite role within a team.”
Two months after the Molde game, McGuinness called and put McFadden on a programme. He had lost time to make up for and knuckled down during a year that saw Donegal reach an All-Ireland final.
McFadden knew he was in danger of being ‘left behind’ – and got to work.
Now a key part of the Donegal XV, McFadden has listened intently to the debate regarding Michael Murphy’s stationing in the Donegal team.
After a stellar display at full-forward against Roscommon two weeks ago, when Murphy kicked nine points, the old chestnut raised its head again.
“Are you going to take it as an insult that someone wants Michael Murphy to play midfield with you? I don’t anyway,” McFadden says.
“Don’t get me wrong, if someone said your midfield’s not good enough and you need Michael Murphy there to shovel your s*** for the want of a better phrase, you would take it personally.
“I think we’ve performed well in the middle sector throughout all of Ulster. Given the nature of the style of football Dublin play, it’s very hard sometimes to be competitive on their kick-out.
“Odhran Mac Niallais and I lined out at midfield against Dublin and we didn’t contest the Dublin kick-out. It wasn’t like they were out-fielding us or beating us on breaks, we just didn’t contest the kick-outs given the standard Stephen Cluxton was picking out players between his own 45.
“The criticism after the Dublin game on where Michael needed to play was a bit unwarranted. When Dublin are at it, they’re at it unfortunately but I think we proved against Roscommon, when Michael was in at full-forward, that we could handle ourselves around the middle.”
McFadden is well versed on Donegal’s rivalry with Tyrone from his underage days and has been stung by defeats in the previous two summers – in the Ulster final of 2016 and the semi-final last year.
“There’ll always be the pain of that heartbreaking defeat in 2016, considering the style in which Tyrone won it to be fair to them – Peter Harte, Sean Cavanagh, they were two of the best points I’ve ever seen in person and I suppose that hurt’s always going to be there,” he reflects.
“The nature of the defeat was very disappointing, we do acknowledge they were a very good team performing at a very high level, but we still wouldn’t have been happy with our standards that day.”
As a supporter on the terraces, McFadden saw Donegal record wins in 2011, 2012 and 2013, while he was on the panel in 2015.
Now, he’s front and centre and will have the shovel slung behind him as he heads to work tomorrow.
He says: “It’s the first do-or-die game of the season. The summer is over is we lose. That beings an extra edge, definitely.
“We played in All-Ireland quarter-finals in 2015 and 2016, but this will be one of the biggest games this team will play. The League, we got used to playing a lot of big games against these sort of teams.
“We know a lot of the players from Tyrone from underage level and the older lads all know each other too.”
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