Peadar Mogan was 13 when he first encountered Jim McGuinness. The Donegal manager was bringing silverware around the county and one of the stops was Mountcharles where the young Mogan lived. áí
“Got a photo with him after 2012,” the accomplished defender recalled on Thursday when presented with the PwC GAA-GPA Footballer of the Month award for May.
Last August the two were reacquainted when McGuiness arrived to take up his second managerial tour of duty with the Donegal footballers.
“There was huge respect for him because of what he had done. He can draw on loads of experiences he’s had throughout the years.”
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All of the county is hoping that the most relevant experience will prove to be the winning of Sam Maguire, Donegal’s second, 12 years ago. His reappointment after a very troubled 2023 completely transformed morale in the county.
Mogan escaped the full impact of last year partly because he was injured and, earlier, as he was doing a postgraduate course in Liverpool. He believes the downtime afforded by injury helped him “to refresh and get ready” for when the new manager arrived.
“There was huge excitement, first of all. There was huge excitement within the county and personally too there was huge excitement,” he said. “It just gave everything and everyone a huge boost after last year, getting beaten early and just the way things went. It was just a welcome time and it was brilliant timing.”
Asked to summarise McGuinness’s impact, which has already delivered promotion, a league title and then the Ulster title, he said:
“I think it was just the way he talked about Donegal as a county and the way he talked about football and, you know, he played for Donegal. He’s managed Donegal before; he grew up supporting Donegal so it’s in who he is and, no matter where he’s travelled in the world, he never forgot about Donegal.
“How much he actually cared about the supporters to try to give them something to cheer about because I think that’s huge. That initial contact with him, I’d say that was the main thing that rubbed off.”
On the training ground there is consensus that the manager’s big asset is his ability to simplify his tactical approach and communicate it clearly and effectively.
“Yeah,” said Mogan, “it was just his ways of delivering messages and his clear and concise communication and his passion.”
The player, who wears number seven but frequently plays corner back, has been one of the stars of the season for the team. Tremendously efficient in the dramatic Ulster final against Armagh, he also got up the field to score a couple of points.
Then, after the first All-Ireland group match against Tyrone, by consensus Donegal’s best performance of the season, Mogan was given a man marking detail on Darren McCurry, which went so well that he outscored the former All Star corner forward and was named man of the match and on gaa.ie, footballer of the week.
Even the following match, a surprise defeat in Cork, didn’t damage the overall project too badly even though it was a first setback all season, having been unbeaten in league and championship up to that point.
The lessons were twofold, he said.
“You have to give Cork credit for the way their forwards pressed really well as a group and they forced a lot of errors from us that led to goals,” and “in terms of us taking the ball in, running into contact that was unwanted and it was down to individual errors which they completely capitalised on.”
But Donegal still managed to win the group and gain automatic access to the All-Ireland quarter-finals where on Sunday they will be hot favourites when facing Leinster finalists, Louth, who pushed them in the league.
Mogan remains cautious despite the loaded expectation.
“We have not been in the semi-finals since 2014 so we really can’t think past this. We are just looking literally to get to the next stage which would be huge for us.”
• Other May winners in the PwC GAA-GPA player of the month awards were in camogie, Beth Carton (Waterford), Danielle O’Leary (Kerry) for women’s football and Cork hurler Darragh Fitzgibbon.
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