Brian McEniff’s brief directions end with what feels like his most salient wedge of detail: “You’ll see four Donegal flags in the garden.”
He’s already standing there among them when you arrive, looking as proud as any man could possibly look on a lawn full of fluttering green and gold polyester.
He’s 82 years young now. Or 82 and a half, as he points out. Sprightly, engaging and still sharp as a tack. As Donegal prepare for only a fourth ever All-Ireland final appearance, the man who led the county to its first is in his element.
The house is alive with people, mostly grandchildren and great-grandchildren dispersed across a multitude of couches and tables, some quietly reading and others busily colouring.
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None of them bat an eyelid at yet another randomer walking through the hallway talking football with the man of the house. Unicorns won’t colour themselves, after all. And it’s that kind of house. A home.
“There are always people here,” says McEniff with an air of understandable fulfilment.
But before we sit down, he picks up a photo of his younger self alongside his four siblings. Mary, his only sister, passed away in May. He instinctively rubs his index finger gently across her face.
McEniff himself suffered a heart attack at the end of 2021, a period he reflects upon as a “scary time” but almost four years on, he is grateful to be feeling hale and hearty again.
“Fortunate, thankful,” he says.
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He has been living in this house since the mid-1960s, tucked just in off Bundoran’s main street behind the Holyrood Hotel, which his parents bought as a B&B in 1949 and so started the McEniff hotel empire.
Brian junior, or Briany as his dad affectionately calls him, brings a tray of pastries and a pot of steaming tea. Brian pours. An audience with the godfather of Donegal football has begun.
“Ah, I wouldn’t take much notice of that,” he smiles at the godfather sobriquet.
And yet in this very room well over a decade ago now Jim McGuinness laid out his vision to McEniff for the future of Donegal football. Both men would scoff at the imagery of the heir apparent seeking validation from the kingmaker, but there’s more than a scrap of truth in there.
“Jim’s plans were super, he was ahead of his time,” recalls McEniff. But others weren’t convinced. McGuinness applied for the senior job twice and was overlooked on both occasions.
But when McEniff was asked in 2009 to head up a committee to appoint a Donegal under-21 manager, he realigned destiny.
“Jim got them to the All-Ireland under-21 final in 2010 but then later that year he actually wasn’t going to go for the senior job when it became vacant. He was probably p**sed off at not having got it previously but I told him he had to go for it. Thankfully he did and the rest is history.”
If McEniff is the godfather, then McGuinness is the messiah.
But when Donegal advanced to their first ever Ulster SFC final appearance in 1963, McEniff was living and working in Canada. He spent four years there but missing out on that provincial final left a mark on his soul.
“There was a deep sadness that you weren’t at home to be involved. That feeling stayed with me.”
When his dad suffered a stroke in 1965, McEniff returned to help with the family business. He managed the Donegal minors in 1969 and 1970 but was then relieved of his duties. Sacked.
By the end of 1971 the Donegal seniors were drifting. Leitrim had beaten them 3-11 to 2-5 in the last league game of the year that December. Morale was low. With nobody at the tiller, McEniff assumed the role of player-manager.
“Thirteen of the team that lost to Leitrim won the Ulster Championship the following year. It’s amazing what can be done.”
It was Donegal’s inaugural Ulster triumph. McEniff would bring five provincial titles back to the hills but 1992 proved to be the landmark year.
“The buzz around the county was unreal ahead of that final,” he says.
“But within the camp we kept a lid on it, some of our boys had won an under-21 All-Ireland in 1982, so they’d been on the go a while. Still, we entered the final against Dublin very much as underdogs.”
But they emerged as heroes.
The outpouring of pride and joy in the aftermath was something the county had never experienced before.
Still, over the years McEniff has always been conscious within the euphoria there was also some heartache.
In particular, the fate of 25-year-old Seamus Braid who died following an assault on O’Connell Street just hours after the game.
With only a couple of minutes remaining at Croke Park that afternoon, Donegal selector Michael Lafferty, in a fluster, grabbed McEniff and told him a young fan was standing in the dugout alongside the subs. “Brian, what are we going to do with this man?”
McEniff, absorbed totally in what was unfolding in front of him, waved away the drama: “Just leave him there.”
Video footage of those final seconds shows the supporter, wearing a maroon checked shirt and sporting a green and yellow headband, standing among the Donegal subs.
At the final whistle he throws his arms around McEniff. It was Seamus Braid from Downings.
“Somebody had hopped the fence and got in our dugout. When the game was over that same boy had a hand on my shoulder as I went across the pitch.
“I later found out he was the young lad who was killed that night. That was very sad, very hard on his family, so when I think about the final whistle I think about that boy.”
When Sam Maguire arrived to Donegal for the first time on the Monday evening, McEniff alighted from the team bus and carried it across the Donegal-Leitrim border outside Bundoran.
When they got to his hometown soon after, his mam was among the throng waiting to welcome the team home. A lifetime’s ambition had been realised.
McEniff stepped away at the end of 1994 but he returned to manage Donegal for one more year in 2003 because, again, nobody else wanted the gig.
Perceived as a hopeless rabble, McEniff guided that team to an All-Ireland semi-final. The next time Donegal would reach the last four was to be under McGuinness. Full circle.
McGuinness first caught McEniff’s eye in the 1990 Donegal intermediate final, after which the Donegal manager asked him in for a trial. Subsequently, McGuinness was invited to join the county squad but the Glenties man had plans to hit America.
“I said to him, ‘Jim, I’m putting you on the Donegal panel, you can’t be going to America.’ He stayed,” remembers McEniff.
Since offering guidance to McGuinness during those formative years, the pair’s relationship has remained strong. When the Donegal 1992 side were the Jubilee Team before the 2017 All-Ireland final, McGuinness was unable to attend as he was coaching in China so his son Mark Anthony stood in and took to the field holding McEniff’s hand.
“I’ve known Jim since he was a kid, so I was very proud to walk out with Jim’s son alongside me that day.”
As for this Sunday, McEniff believes Donegal will win.
“The game we play is hard to live with. Jim is probably the most highly skilled GAA team manager ever – O’Dwyer and Heffernan were great managers in their time but Jim has raised the bar way up.”
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Before McEniff had even left Croke Park after the semi-final win over Meath two weeks ago, his phone started buzzing.
“Manus Boyle was first to call. I knew why he was on before I answered, ‘Well Brian, what about tickets for the final?’
“I’d hardly hung up when Tony Boyle called. ‘Tony, Manus has been on already.’ We have a great friendship, there’s a great bond with that 1992 team. You can never break that.”
There can only ever be one first time.
Irrespective of the result this Sunday, McEniff will be standing outside Supervalu in Bundoran next Saturday selling lotto tickets for Realt na Mara. As he does every weekend.
“Saturday afternoon, one o’clock. I enjoy it, I meet people, locals and visitors. And I sell like hell. A lot of times I’d have to end up moving people on, ‘Look, I’ve lotto tickets to sell here, go on,” he laughs.
All-Ireland winning manager, All-Star footballer, Ireland international Rules manager, Ulster Railway Cup boss, hotelier, club lotto salesman, a man of many hats.
Just over his shoulder in the livingroom is a walnut veneered piano – he’s also talented pianist. Above it on the wall is a photo of his 10 children. He takes the frame down off the wall and like any proud dad he goes through the achievements and whereabouts of all 10.
He has 21 grandchildren too, but sadly his grandson Jarlath Ruane died in February 2024. Sport is sport, but it doesn’t cocoon you from tragedy. He might be known to many as a football man, but a moment in his company is all you need to realise above all else Brian McEniff is a family man.
“That was a very difficult time for us all,” he says.
As he speaks, his wife, Cautie – a Cork woman he met while studying hotel management in Cathal Brugha Street – enters the room.
“My mother was a very special lady, she made life possible for me to play football at the level I played. Herself and that good woman there,” he says, pointing to Cautie.
“Two wonderful people who allowed me to pursue so many things in life.”
As we walk out the front door he swings opens both arms to jokingly acclaim the four Donegal flags blowing in the light sea breeze.
He was in Donegal town a few weeks back when he noticed a bric-a-brac shop on the Diamond. He told Cautie to hold on a second and popped inside. Moments later, much to her amusement, he emerged clutching a bundle of Donegal flags.
“I always think it goes back to those years I missed when I was away. I have a huge grá for the county. I love Donegal, that’s just it.”
As for all the talk of David Clifford, McEniff feels Michael Murphy could be the difference maker on Sunday.
“Michael is god up here,” he says. “They call Peter Canavan god, but Murphy is our god.”
McEniff, McGuinness, Murphy.
Donegal’s holy trinity.
Still, for a man of religion, McEniff says he hasn’t prayed for Donegal to win the All-Ireland.
“No, I pray for Jim. He’s a great man.”
It takes one to know one.
