All-Ireland SFC Semi-final Profile of Brian McEniff: Tom Humphries on how five decades of turning water into wine has made Brian McEniff the central figure in every Donegal success

In Donegal, they could argue over the low point, whether it came this winter or whether it came 31 years ago, or even at some point before that even. In a county where football life has always been marked by periods of opulent feast or chafing famine, experiences which come sometimes right on top of each other, the one constant source of sustenance has been Brian McEniff.

Sustenance? Miracles.

It's commonplace now but worth considering nonetheless. All Donegal success has its source in McEniff. St Joseph's unofficial All-Ireland club title in 1968. Every Ulster title the county have won since and including 1972. The All-Ireland of 1992.

This year's extraordinary redemption. Five decades of turning water into wine.

This spring they found themselves down and out. Mickey Moran and John Morrison had done much good work in the county last summer and then Donegal came to the capital, got a draw with Dublin and carried on like a bunch of hayseeds who thought they'd struck oil. With a replay looming the following week all but six of the side decided to remain in Dublin that Sunday night, the better to celebrate a drawn match. Next week they were blown away and so was the moral authority of the management structure.

By December of last year two things became clear. Nobody wanted to be county chairman in Donegal. Nobody wanted to be county manager. Each chalice had the word "Poison" writ large on it. In the end Brian McEniff, with that sense of noblesse oblige which has distinguished his career, stepped in and took both jobs, the latter on a caretaker basis.

The caretaking soon became something different as various parties were approached only to announce they wouldn't be touching the Donegal footballers. Not this season. Not with a barge pole. McEniff became resigned to having to do the job himself. Even that went hard. Seán O'Kane took umbrage at the arrival of Matt Gallagher to help in a training session. O'Kane left. Gallagher stayed. Not long afterwards Gallagher left. McEniff went back to faces he has known forever. Anthony Harkin came on board for fitness. PJ McGowan for selection duties.

They lost five in a row in the league. Won the last game against Roscommon but still dropped through the trapdoor for the first time in a decade and a half. They'd wintered badly and had little stored by way of residual fitness. They started their heavy work in April. They played Fermanagh in the championship in May. Fermanagh were awful. Donegal were emphatically worse. McEniff went into a state of depression for a few days. Rock bottom had been located. Nadir. Donegal planted the flag there.

Kings of the place.

"After that loss to Fermanagh, " says PJ McGowan, "well it was a real low point in Brian's football career. Maybe the lowest point. Finding himself in this situation. Barring Roscommon we'd lost all our National League games, then we went out and we didn't have enough for Fermanagh. He was hurt and embarrassed."

Other friends concur about the effect the defeat to Fermanagh had on McEniff this year.

"I spoke with him that evening," says his old comrade Pauric McShea "He'd know the bit of needle between Fermanagh and Donegal. He'd feel that. He was extremely disillusioned. He said he never found it as hard to go training on a Tuesday as he did."

Martin McHugh dropped by too.

"He's a bad loser anyway. Any game he loses he takes bad. A game of cards, if he lost it he'd take it bad. I was young in 1983 when we lost an All-Ireland semi-final and I can remember him in bad form. He wasn't as low then as after the Fermanagh game though. That hit him so hard. I spoke to him that night. He was so down. He didn't know what went wrong, didn't know where to go."

Fortunately for Donegal football McEniff had no option but to get back up on the horse. The backdoor system often means that just when you least feel like speaking to anyone about football you have a match in a few days' time.

"We had Longford six days later," recalls PJ McGowan. "We did light training in Ballybofey on Tuesday night. Then on Thursday we went to the swimming pool and afterwards the players met and the management met and then there was interaction between the two. We discussed things. We discussed the pride of football and the pride of Brian McEniff. These things had been shattered. Players started to realise that. There were doubts as to whether we could turn it around. The 1992 team that Brian had were older, more mature, they knew how to change things. This was a younger group remembered for choking against Dublin."

They got over Longford and started the great haul back to respectability. The evidence of a miraculous transformation was still hard to see. Those who knew McEniff best, though, knew that all he needed was time.

"A lot of people had started wondering if he was past his sell-by-date," says Anthony Molloy. "If he'd come back once too often. This is a man that's been around too long, though. He has the experience and the craft. All he needed was to get to know the players better. And they him."

That they turned it around surprises nobody who has known McEniff during the five remarkable decades of his influence on football. On the Tuesday night after the Fermanagh debacle apart from training and running a large hotel chain McEniff had to travel to chair a county board meeting. Half of him was dreading it, a political battle was the last thing he needed that week. Not one delegate raised the issue of the Fermanagh game. McEniff commands too much respect.

Proof of how pervasive that respect is came the following weekend. When the Donegal team ducked into the dressing-rooms at MacCumhail Park to get ready for Longford, they warned themselves that when they went outside there would be several hundred people present and mostly they would have come to scorn and mock on the basis of the Fermanagh performance. The team accepted that this would be their due.

When they hit the field, though, they found 8,000 Donegal fans inside the ground. And the waves of encouragement breaking over their heads shocked and humbled them. Young players began looking at Brian McEniff with fresh eyes. There was something happening here.

In Gaelic football enduring legends aren't rare. Mick O'Dwyer and Seán Boylan go back a long way but in different ways. Pete McGrath had a lengthy stint in Down and Eamon Coleman's on and off affair with Derry still fascinates.

There is no story like McEniff's, though. In football terms he belongs to that species which sees things that have never been and asks why not? In a playing career that goes back to the '60s he was instrumental in the development of the All-Ireland club series, playing on the St Joseph's team which won the first unofficial title back in 1968.

The '60s. Pauric McShea remembers McEniff came back from Canada at about 19 years of age. He'd been away studying catering for a couple of years when his dad had a heart attack and McEniff swung back into town, his face lit by the same infectious enthusiasm he'd always had.

McShea was the bright young thing on the county team. A corner forward at the time. Bernard Brady, the county full back, lived in Bundoran and he'd pick up young McShea on the way to county training in Ballybofey and they'd ride on through, sheriff and gunslinger. County men.

Then on McEniff's first night back from Canada, Brady picked up McShea in Ballyshannon as usual and in the front of the car with boots and togs on was McEniff.

"I always remember," says McShea, still bemused by his friend, "he came back that day and he trained with the county team, totally uninvited. He had that confidence always."

On the field of play with his club McEniff laid the basis for a remarkable reputation. He was an authority within the team and he drew the authority from the consistent quality of his performances. He knew, for instance, if facing a Joe Kernan-type player he wouldn't win a lot of ball overhead so he unsettled them. A typical McEniff performance would be to go looking for a couple of early balls and speed off down the field to nick a point or two .

"That would put the forward under a bit of pressure," says McShea. "They'd be watching Brian then rather than the other way around. He was meticulous. Always well prepared. Ahead of his time in that respect. He always knew his man's weaknesses. Even today there wouldn't be a club player in Donegal that he couldn't tell you whether he's left-footed or right-footed."

McEniff was among the game's first player-managers when he took over Donegal in 1972. That was 31 years ago and perhaps Donegal were ebbing lower than they were this spring. They suffered a 19-point league defeat to Leitrim in Carrick-on-Shannon that spring and for a county that had never won a provincial title before the accession of McEniff from right half back to the management chair must have been a matter of supreme indifference.

For McEniff, hyperactive but meticulous with it, it was no big deal. PJ McGowan can remember in 1969 and 1970 playing for a Donegal minor side managed by McEniff.

"He'd manage us for our game, then say a few words and march off into the senior dressing-room and come out a little while later and play for the senior team."

Donegal won Ulster senior titles under his tutelage in 1972, 1974, 1983, 1990 and 1992. They've been away for a while now but perhaps this season and the return from the dead ranks as equal to any achievement over the years.

What has brought Donegal around the corner is McEniff's ability to handle players.

"We don't have a sports psychologist in our camp," says PJ McGowan. "I'm not sure we need one. Brian would think football morning noon or night. He'd ring five or six times in a day about this or that. Not just me, the players too."

Anthony Molloy remembers a couple of the incidents among the many through which McEniff has influenced his life.

"In 1991 I had retired and I met McEniff at a club match and he just said 'C'mon Molloy, we'll give it one last chance you and me.' And he put it like that and there was no choice. I came back. Then early in 1992 I crashed my car and at the time I hadn't the money to get it fixed. McEniff in fairness just produced the money and got me back on the road. Things like that, jobs, advice, anything, Brian will be there for you."

"That's the key to him," says Martin McHugh, "how he deals with people. I came in at the end of 1980 and I was a wee country lad coming into a big set-up. The big clubs dominated the panel. Fellas with plenty of confidence but Brian always had a presence. He made you feel as though you were as worthwhile to the team as the next player. His man management is brilliant.

"He'll get more out of an ordinary or a poor player than anyone else in the country."

The current Donegal panel had to learn the ways of McEniff slowly. And McEniff had to learn about them. The mobile phones and alcopops generation live a lifestyle with which McEniff is broadly unfamiliar. He noted a couple of times over the spring that not only was he asking players to change their ways, he was having to change and adapt himself.

If Donegal lose tomorrow, McEniff will do what has to be done. He'll shake hands and he'll give interviews and he'll wave to the crowd but don't expect him to be grateful for the big adventure. Losing is losing.

"When we lost to Galway that year, to a late Val Daly goal," remembers PJ McGowan of 1983, "he walked the streets of Dublin for hours that night. On his own. Defeat cuts to his heart."

"His ability to come back from knocks. That amazes me. He bounces back. He's been sacked a few times as county manager even after winning championships with the team. He comes back without any grudges. That's a great trait."

Pauric McShea sees no easing in the addiction. He recalls during McEniff's last stint as county manager getting a call at 2:30 in the morning, a continuation of a discussion from the evening before about dropping a key player. McShea as a friend had offered his view that the player should be persevered with.

"Is that you?" whispered McEniff. "Well who else would be in bed with my wife at this hour?" replied McShea. "Well listen. I'll take your advice. I'm going with him."

Another morning he called to McEniff's kitchen in Bundoran to pick him up to go see a McKenna Cup match in Derry. McEniff had pneumonia. The sweat was running off him as he sat there in his pyjamas. His wife Caiti was determined that he stay at home.

Her arguments were unimpeachable.

It's only McKenna Cup between two other counties. You have pneumonia.

Finally McEniff slipped his suit on over his pyjamas, donned an overcoat and disappeared with McShea. They hadn't thought about that story until recently when McShea spoke to his friend as he was hurrying back from training because there was an under-12 match he didn't want to miss.

"Madness or greatness? It's his obsession. He'd be tense this week but he revels in it. He loves being involved with players."

And will this be the swansong? Nobody is quite sure. Everyone doubts it. McEniff's world would be greyer without football.

And vice versa.