Eamon McGee nods when he hears Darragh Ó Sé’s conviction that Kerry will beat Donegal if they don’t concede goals.
“Darragh Ó Sé should know,” he says agreeably, nursing a cup of tea and zipping his tracksuit up to the neck to ward off a late afternoon chill in Ballybofey. “He’s played in enough finals, so he’s entitled to his opinion and it’s a valid enough opinion. I’m sure if you studied the Dublin game, then we’ve got three goals and probably could have got a few more. You take them away and it’s going to be a big part of our scoring gone, so he has a valid point. But obviously we’ll be trying to counteract it.
‘Tradition required’
“Kerry have that belief and that tradition that’s required. We’d have found ourselves in Croke Park years ago and nearly been overawed. But Kerry will be looking like . . . this will be our third All-Ireland final and Kerry will be coming in on the back of countless All-Ireland finals, and with the belief that they should be winning – and that they will be winning. So it’s a big, big challenge for us.”
Overcoming Kerry in the quarter-final of 2012 fired Jim McGuinness’s emerging Donegal team with the belief that they could keep on going. But this is different. Playing the Kingdom in any championship match is a special moment in the career of any player. But to come up against them in an All-Ireland final is, as all of the Donegal players have said in chorus, something of a childhood dream.
Two years ago, McGee marked Kieran Donaghy and the pair sparked off each other for 70 minutes before the Tralee man snapped a late goal to set up a breathtaking finish.
The ifs-and-buts surrounding when and where Donaghy will play on Sunday is something the Gweedore man is not going to worry about prematurely. But he does expect to see the big Kerry man amble into his vicinity at some point, even if he does move to centrefield at some stage.
“If you’re Éamonn Fitzmaurice you could go down that route. I think every manager is trying to spring a surprise here and there. Jim has done it, and there have been a few other surprises down through the championship. So you never know what could happen. Kieran can play midfield. He can play half-forward. But his most lethal position is in around the square, so if he doesn’t start there he’ll be in there at some stage, I’d imagine.”
Devastating impact
Donaghy’s devastating impact against Mayo, setting up the goal which resurrected the Kingdom in the drawn match before causing mayhem on the edge of the square in Limerick was advertisement enough of the fact that he has lost nothing of his ability to work magic with a judicious high ball.
McGee knows well the threat he poses. “As I said before, I kind of like the big bucks coming . . . I don’t like the small, speedy bucks coming. Listen, I played against him in 2012, was relatively happy, he got in for a goal in the last 10 minutes. It’s something I look forward to. Now, every player will say that – you have to challenge yourself and measure yourself against the best. And Kieran is up there with the best.”
Not that is it just about Donaghy. Against Mayo, the Kerry men displayed their ability to punish from all over the field: David Moran has a lethal eye for a long-range score, Paul and Michael Geaney have been subtly brilliant all summer, Donnchadh Walsh keeps the forward unit motoring and Declan O'Sullivan remains one of the smoothest football players of his generation. On top of that, there is the O'Donoghue kid. How does a defender stop the lightning forward?
“Just trying to think up a smart answer there,” McGee offers after a pause. “No, James is a magical player and he’ll take some stopping. But it will probably be Neil or Paddy McGrath that will be on him and no better two lads that’ll be up for it. It’s just a case of getting the match-ups right and getting lads in around him, to support him (the marker) and to try and close it down.”
This time last year, McGee was fed up to his teeth of Gaelic football. His season ended with a straight red card as Mayo sank Donegal at Croke Park. He remembers how he passed All-Ireland final day last year.
‘Self pity’
“I didn’t watch it,” he says of the Dublin-Mayo match. “I was just that upset – I was still sick from the performance against Mayo that I couldn’t be bothered either being involved in GAA or watching it. It was just self pity to be honest with you. It wasn’t a case of staying away from it. I was playing soccer for Gweedore Celtic and I ended up getting sent off. Some boy was mouthing to me about Croke Park or something and I ended up getting a straight red. That was the height of my All-Ireland final.”
He grins when asked if the red card was justified. “Oh, fully justified. It was off the ball. It was fully, fully justified. I have made peace with it.”
It was only in the autumn, when the squad sat down and faced each other properly that he felt the appetite returning. It turned out that they all felt much the same as he had done.
“A few of the lads were talking after the Mayo game. I said it earlier on there that self pity is a useless emotion in my own opinion. It doesn’t serve to do much. But a lot of that was going about. And we sat down together and quickly realised that we have a bit of unfinished business to do.”
