SIDELINE CUT:A mere 19-year-old on the bench when Donegal claimed their only Sam Maguire in 1992, Jim McGuinness has led the county to tonight's under-21 final against Dublin, writes KEITH DUGGAN

IT IS always the ones you don’t expect. Tonight, Jim McGuinness will lead Donegal into just the fourth All-Ireland final in their history. In the sprawling narrative of GAA stories, when placed against the megawatt achievements of the biggest names in the association, this is a modest enough achievement.

But he comes from a county that does not appear in All-Ireland finals very often and that is the backdrop against which the significance of tonight can be measured.

And when you look back at the football life of the Glenties man, it makes sense that out of the crowded house of former footballers who might have come through to lead, the voice they are hearing belongs to McGuinness.

He was always “Big Jim”, even in his schooldays although, in truth, he was a skinny whippet of a kid then under a mop of curls. We first came across him on basketball courts when he was playing for Glenties VS, slugging out God-awful matches in half-dark gyms.

Two of our own players – imaginatively known as “Big Gully” and “Big McGee” stood at 6ft 7in and 6ft 4in – respectively so Jim’s brand of bigness was never really apparent to us at that stage.

But he was athletic and he had a hot temper and he was good fun to play against. Then the Leaving Certificate was done and school was out and everyone went their own way and it was a surprise to learn that, a few years later, “Big Jim” had been drafted onto the Donegal football panel by Brian McEniff.

He was the youngster on an aging side, plucked out of the pack after a few bright showings and there for the future.

Donegal were supposed to be over the hill that year; they had been decimated the previous summer by a dazzling Down team who went on and swept to victory in the All-Ireland championship. Some of us saw Brian Murray on Rossnowlagh beach the day after that 1991 defeat.

The day was scorching and the big garda wore shades that made you think of a boxer the day after a pulverising defeat in Madison Square Garden. We figured then that Donegal’s best days were done.

But the following September, 1992, Murray was in the middle of Croke Park and Big Jim McGuinness was on the bench. He hadn’t even put in a full season and he was about to win an All-Ireland medal.

Every other footballer of his age in the county shook their heads. Lucky bastard, they said. He was too. Ten years later, he would reflect on the strangeness of it all.

Jim enjoyed the fun and the parties and the attention that came with being part of this squad but, privately, he knew what a gift this had been. He knew the names of every player who had retired in the year or two before he joined the panel.

“Boys who would have missed out by six months. And here was I, who had proven nothing. I wasn’t even old enough to understand what it meant.”

Little did he know then that 1992 was to be as good as it got for him. For ten years and more McGuinness played without winning a thing. He was light-hearted but he took the football seriously and the game was good to him.

When Glenties and Donegal were knocked out of the championship, he would take up an offer to go play for some American club. I bumped into him in a bar over there on the night Leitrim had won the Connacht final in 1994. He hadn’t heard the news and smiled good-humouredly.

He was from Glenties – Brian Friel country – in the extreme south of the county. Leitrim didn’t mean that much to him.

“Sure you’d love that,” he said, “You’re from Leitrim.”

In his twenties, uncertain of what he wanted to do in life, he made the decision to go back and sit the Leaving Cert and in the following years won Sigerson Cup honours on his way to getting a degree in sports psychology. He lectures nowadays, in real life.

His football life still spins on the summer of 1998. Donegal were two minutes from winning an Ulster final against Derry and then, a flash break from nothing and Joe Brolly has scored a goal and is blowing kisses to the crowd.

A few weeks later McGuinness was being driven to Dublin by his brother Mark when their car spun out of control. Big Jim was fine but his brother died instantly at the age of 27. This was the second brother he lost: Charles had died from a heart condition back in 1986.

For a few years after that he put on a public show but privately he was bewildered, attacking the beer and hardcore training with equal ferocity. Eventually, he made peace with himself but the ache to win something never left.

“I’d carry a limp for the rest of my life to win an Ulster medal,” he said in 2002. He scored a goal against Armagh in that year’s provincial final – probably left the field with a limp too. But he got no medal. Instead, he received another runner-up trinket.

Three years later, he had guided Glenties to an unexpected county senior title. Last year, he threw his hat in the ring for the Under-21 job and now, here he is, back in an All-Ireland final against Dublin.

He still has the famished look of a greyhound about him and you don’t have to watch that Under-21 team for too long to see that they hang on his every word.

In 1982, when Donegal won their first All-Ireland title at Under-21, Packie Keeney filmed the match and, in the grainy pandemonium that follows the final whistle, Fr Seán Gallagher, acting as commentator shouts “We’ve won it! We’ve won it!”

There is a stunned quality to his voice of a man witnessing the miraculous. It probably seemed like that then.

Another All-Ireland would follow in 1987 before 1992 happened. Since then, there has been nothing at All-Ireland grade. Donegal people will travel tonight to Cavan in hope and trepidation.

All-Ireland finals come around unexpectedly and irregularly and without any promise or sign of when the next one will follow. For Donegal people, the sky blue Dublin colours represent a long tradition of winning, full houses in summer, the big time.

It has been lost on no-one that the Jim who manages the metropolitan side, Jim Gavin, has his own All-Ireland heritage; the meticulous free-taker and smart lad from the 1995 vintage.

When the team colours merge on the field tonight – the blues and the pale gold and green – it is bound to evoke memories of 1992 for more than a few people.

The manager won’t have time to dwell on such nostalgia but in the odd, chaotic way of these things, his journey to this point was underway then. You can be sure that he would be old enough to understand what it means now.

Given his services to Donegal over the years since, he earned that All-Ireland medal in the long run.