Donegal. 

It’s amazing how, in the space of just one year, that name and the respect it once commanded, the myth-like legend that it once fed has disintegrated into just three ordinary syllables.

Donegal.

No longer does the great mystique surround the men from the hills or the reverence pour in for the once revolutionary Jim McGuinness.  Donegal are just Donegal.  Human.  Beatable.

Around this time two years ago, John Brennan was preparing to take Derry into an impossible preliminary round clash in Ballybofey.  The north west county had won their first provincial title in two decades and they had taken the mighty Dublin the whole way to the wire in a drab semi final at Croke Park.  For all intents and purposes, the work the players had been subjected to, the 200-metre sprints, the early mornings, the vomiting, it had been worth it.  It was clear as day that they were headed somewhere and there was always a sense that that 2012 encounter was frighteningly inevitable.

McGuinness, like him or loathe him, had changed the landscape of modern day football forever – and not just because the underdogs’ unprecedented All-Ireland success that year sparked the Football Review Committee into proposing some of their most drastic changes yet.  That’s right, Donegal win something and it must be a problem with the game.

The biggest test for the Glenties man though was never going to be in the mastermind of what was a phenomenal transformation of a county stuck in apathy throughout this entire millennium.  It was going to be what came after.  It was going to be dealing with the response from the rest of the country but, as of yet, Donegal have come unstuck.  Donegal haven’t responded.

You see, it was never the blanket defence that won them anything.  It wasn’t the quilt, or the sheets or the pillow cases that they threw on top as well.  Donegal’s success, plain and simply, was down to fitness.  Freak fitness.  Conditioning levels that broke through the wall and took the levels of professionalism of an amateur game onto a whole new scale.  They got in there before the rest of us did and they reaped the rewards with two Ulsters and a Sam Maguire.

In doing so, the once perceived superhuman fitness of those in green and gold striding through the football fields of Ireland became a benchmark.  Sooner or later, it just became necessary.   The bare minimum.  

And all of a sudden, once those runners were tracked, once the rest of the teams were able to perform the same lung-busters, we were back to prizing footballers as the most important ingredient in a game of a football.  Who’d have thought it, eh?  All of a sudden, once that level playing field was acquired again, we were looking at tactics again, at coaching, at changes at the right time.  All of a sudden, Dublin left us awestruck.  Malachy O’Rourke and James Horan earned their stripes.  McGuinness?  Well he got left behind.

In truth, the loss to Monaghan last year was bigger than the Anglo-Celt that they missed out on.  Whereas the early signs were there in two unconvincing performances against Tyrone and Down, Donegal were still carrying that aura of invincibility in every battle they entered, bloodied or not.  They were still on the march.  But O’Rourke and Monaghan dealt them a blow that they have yet to recover from because it wasn’t just the rest of the country that finally realised that day that the once fearsome Donegal were beatable.  The Donegal players themselves realised too that they were beatable.  And suddenly the work wasn’t just as worth it, suddenly there were question marks over the management, there were players walking.  It only takes one raised eyebrow for what was more or less an unquestioned cult for the whole thing to fall down around you.

It’s not to say that McGuinness’ side don’t still come to Celtic Park as favourites.  It’s not to say that they’re coming to lie down or that any of the nonsense that has surrounded their camp in the build up to the Ulster quarters will even have any effect on proceedings anyway.  But it is to say that Derry will come to the Lone Moor Road with something they didn’t have in Ballybofey two years ago.  They come with the knowledge that Donegal are beatable.  And that, alone, is worth the 10-point margin which flattered the Oak Leafers that last day.

They come, too, fully prepared for what McGuinness will throw at them – or run at them, in this case.  They come with one of the best management teams in Ireland, with progressive steps that have filled a hungry young outfit with belief, and they come to win.  Not to stand off and fear the Donegal dome, to look on in awe at their 19 off the ball runners, they come for revenge against an outfit they know all too well.

There’s not going to be anything new, there won’t be any surprises in the line-up – to be honest, it was only when Mark McHugh left and the reports said that three other nomads of the squad joined him out the exit door that I realised that Donegal actually had more than 17 players that have featured in the last three years – Derry know exactly what to expect.

That’s why I found it hilarious during the weekend when I was on my way back from a wedding in Ballyliffin and there was a session going on in Muff that I could tell straight away wasn’t the club’s senior side.  Naturally, I pulled in for a nosey and saw the Donegal side being put through their paces but, of course, not even 60 seconds had passed when my view was obstructed by a grumpy-looking man at my car window.

I ignored him for a while, futtered on the phone, started tidying the car until the inevitable knock came.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Naw, I just pulled in to use the phone.’

‘This is private property, you shouldn’t be here.’

‘Alright, no bother.  As I say, I just need to use my phone so once I get a few videos taken I’ll be out of here.’

‘Wow, wow, wait ‘til I tell you son, there’ll be no videos here.  Can I ask you to move your car outside the premises, please.’

So I did, I drove out the gates and sat at the layby on the main road which looks right down on Muff’s pitch.  It was actually a better view but it was this almost pretentious attitude that frustrates me, as if there’s something top secret going on, something better than what we’ve ever seen and to give it away to a mere lay person would be chaos.

This secret formula that McGuinness has worked on for years that outsiders cannot learn, that people from Derry especially can’t discover in the week before the big game, as if it would change everything.

Nothing about Donegal and all their groundbreaking mystique can be divulged to the enemy, that’s why Kevin Cassidy got chucked off the panel.  Because he clarified what everyone already knew.  And yet McGuinness gets a free pass for choosing to train at a border club, at the closest pitch in Donegal to Derry, at a location with a main road into the city whizzing by for all to see.

And my God, how the cat has got out now.  Imagine if Brian McIver got his hands on this sort of information.  If he knew the big secret, the winning formula, the mad, drastic, call it ludicrous idea of sitting one cone at one end of the pitch, and another cone at the other side and actually getting players to run from one to the other.

Imagine the whole of Derry were smacked up the face with the notion that Donegal were doing sprints in training.  But the county wouldn’t even be ready for that.

‘This is private property.’  Where else could Donegal conceal the notion of playing Colm McFadden in the full forward line?

You see, once, at a stage, the idea of catching a glimpse of anything behind closed doors in Donegal would’ve been appealing.  Now, it’s just boring.  Now, it’s just insulting.

They’re clinging to the hope that people actually care.  They’re clinging to the hype that once surrounded them.  But it’s only them creating it and it was and is only that.  It’s hype.

Donegal.

It’s strikes fear into no-one anymore.  It only annoys them.  And McIver will have the backing of the country on Sunday as he plans to strip off whatever’s left of that mask.

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