As Donegal look to win back Sam Maguire for the first time since their 2012 triumph, Marty Morrissey sat down with Donegal manager Jim McGuinness during the week for a lengthy discussion in which they talk about family, peace, his grá for Kerry football, Michael Murphy and David Clifford.
Marty Morrissey: Jim, talk to me about your second coming as Donegal manager. What attracted you back into the Donegal management scene?
Jim McGuinness: I think the players had a big part to play in it Marty, and obviously my whole family as well. Having gone out and been in a different world for a number of years, it was obviously a big decision to go back in at that time. Things weren't going particularly well and whenever Patrick arrived and we started having conversations, it wasn’t on the radar, but it started to make me think about it.
Then the conversations in the house then, they were all keen, so it’s been great really in many respects, because we’ve had a couple of really good years and the family have been to a lot of those games and enjoyed those moments that they might have been too young to experience, or might not have been on the planet at that stage.
So I’d say that’s probably the two biggest factors; the players and where we were at, at that stage, and then internally within the family.
MM: I met your family last year in a car park and they were bitterly disappointed, but they were so proud of their dad and proud of Donegal. Does it make a difference that they’re experiencing this with you, for their first time, but you with them for the second time?
JMcG: It does. It definitely does yeah. My oldest now is 18 years of age today, believe it or not, so they’re getting to an age as well, and the boys, where you can have those conversations around football where what you’re talking about makes sense, and they’re having their own opinion and they’re telling you what’s wrong a lot of the time. But no it’s great to experience it and it’s great for them to experience it as part of being from Donegal as well because as the manager you’re just focused on what’s important and you’re trying to put that message across to the players that it’s a brilliant fortnight and you must enjoy it, but at the same time there’s a game to be played at the end of it.
Whereas I think for the supporters it’s pure joy and pure elation that they’re there and the build-up to it, and trying to get tickets and be part of the day and be in Dublin and everything so all of that I think is brilliant for the supporters to enjoy
MM: Where did your great love for Gaelic football begin for Jim McGuinness?
JMcG: Well Marty that’s a very, very good question. My father never played and he hardly ever seen me play actually. I think probably my mum would have been a part of it definitely. All-Ireland Final day was always a day where the curtains were pulled in the sitting room, and darkness descended, and silence descended as well. Kerry were in most of those finals.
My childhood hero was Jack O’Shea growing up with the way he played the game and how he could jump for the ball. He was an attacking midfielder, and I was playing midfield growing up and I really identified with him. I remember when Jack was managing Mayo and we had won the All-Ireland we played Mayo in Glasgow, and I remember meeting him at the function that night and I was standing beside him and he said "well played today" and I remember pinching myself thinking he obviously doesn’t remember the letter I sent him looking for a jersey.
MM: Did you write to him?
JMcG: I wrote a letter, if it ever got to him [or not]. I get plenty of letters myself now, that’s the kind of space that kids live in, and I think that’s so important. We’re very fortunate in Donegal that we’ve had a lot of success over the years, and in the last 15 years or so, at provincial level and with a couple of All-Ireland’s.
I can remember Marty going to Dublin in 1998, and I think that was the first time we had ever played in Division 1, and playing in Division 3 and watching games in MacCumhaill Park. [I remember] actually, Kerry coming to MacCumhaill Park in 1984 in the centenary year, to play Donegal as part of the centenary celebrations and just being in awe of the players. So, Donegal have made brave progress in terms of what they’ve achieved. Obviously, Brian McEniff was a huge part of that, but it’s important now that these moments are built upon, and there’s more and more kids coming down the road.
MM: I remember you playing in a Sigerson final in Coleraine with Tralee IT and now that you mention the influence Kerry football had on you as a child, was going to Kerry something you really wanted to do as a student? And do you think you’ve learned a lot about Kerry as a result of being there for a little while?
JMcG: I wanted to become a PE teacher and then on that journey I met with my sports psychology lecturer who encouraged me to go in a different route. It felt right and I enjoyed going deeper and deeper into that side of it. I knew in my heart that I wanted to manage Donegal, and I knew it was part of the game that I didn’t know much about, and that there would be a deficiency there.
So I was delighted that I made that decision, and every time you pick up a journal article and read it, you learn something different, and you can then very quickly ask how does that apply to me. That part of it was brilliant and Tralee gave me that opportunity initially, and then I transferred to Jordanstown to get closer to home. It was a brilliant couple of years with Tralee, brilliant fellas and setups, the coaches were fantastic, and the players were brilliant. They were from all over the country but most of them, with maybe six or seven that played for Kerry at senior level and won an All-Ireland in 1997 and it was just great times, so enjoyable.
It's hard to describe it as you don’t have an affinity to these people, like with your club, but then all of a sudden, you’re training twice a day; morning and evening. You do that for three or four days, then off for three or four days as the coaches were trying to mimic a Sigerson weekend because you had a game Friday, Saturday and Sunday; quarter-final, semi-final and final; and extra time if it came to it so that’s why we were doing consecutive training sessions on days to try and get ready for what might come down the tracks.
So all of that was a brilliant experience, but most of all they were brilliant people, they really were. I enjoyed every minute of that.
Donegal boss Jim McGuinness tells us what to expect from the All-Ireland final
— The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) July 27, 2025
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MM: If you look at your own career, and being an All-Ireland winning manager and on the verge of doing it again, what is important for you as the manager and what leadership qualities do you want to have that forevermore these players are going to remember Jim McGuinness? Apart from maybe winning another Sam Maguire. Is there something in your own psyche that you always want them to have in terms of what leadership means, and what it meant to you?
JMcG: I think the most important thing is that honesty peace, and that purity peace. Can you create something where there’s real honesty in the group? Where everyone is there and they want to be there and doing their absolute best. Someone is going to win the final and someone is going to lose the final and that’s fine, but, I think where the regret comes in is if you give it a good shot but there’s 20% left and you’re going down the road on the bus and that’s the part that you’ll struggle with in the future.
So I think as a coach you’re trying to build a culture and a game plan that will get them into these situations where there’s an honesty and purity and go out, give it your best shot, and if it’s not enough then it’s not enough. If you’re going to run into Dublin over the last 15 years or Kerry, the chances are that it mightn’t be enough. But at the same time if you give it absolutely everything you’ve got and there’s nothing left to give, then that’s a good place to be.
We’ve created a situation now where we have a chance of winning this and we have to try and take that opportunity. But if we get everything right, and everything goes according to plan, I think all it gives you as a coach is that you know you’re going to be competitive, and if you’re going to be competitive then you actually have a chance of winning the game. For all of your preparations, there’s another manager and another set of players that are doing the exact same thing and most of the time it comes down to very fine margins.
MM: What is it that brings that chemistry that you now have? You did it in 2012, you had in 2014, and you have it in 2025. You just seem to be to create the bond between the players that will do anything for you. What did you do to create that chemistry?
JMcG: I don’t think they’re doing it for me Marty to be honest with you, I would like to think that they’re doing it for themselves. That they’re trying to get to that place that I was speaking about, that they can free themselves up and just go for it. Take the game, live the moment and give it your best shot; and then as I said, live with the consequences. Obviously in Gaelic football, place and identity become a huge part of it and if you’re in a county that is trying to strive for success, and has tinkered around the edges and tasted it at times, you’re just trying to build on that and bring everyone else in the county along with that.
We are very fortunate in that regard. We are probably one of the strongest supported teams in the country from that point of view, and the fellas know that. They know that there’s huge numbers behind them and huge support behind them. So it’s just about trying to get your performance levels out to do justice to yourself, your families, your clubs, and then the wider community that is the county. That’s the most important thing for me. I think all of the things you’re trying to do in the background has to funnel into that.
MM: You went outside the box and entered the professional world of soccer. What do you think you learned from that, that you brought back to Donegal as manager?
JMcG: The biggest thing is the day-to-day. When you’re in professional sport it’s hugely demanding, at Celtic there’s a game every three days. There’s a high five in the dressing room and a well done that’s brilliant and then all of a sudden people are on their computers and they’re away again trying to get ahead of it. That’s the way it works and China or America, it’s exactly the same.
You’re living in a world and that world is football, there’s almost nothing beyond it. It’s so difficult to get out into normality, but for most people that’s the drug that people are absolutely hooked on. When you get your break then and you’re off for a couple of weeks in the summer, you actually miss the relentless nature of it.
So, coming back in, we played ten games this year, almost double what it would have been in the past, which is a lot. But the relentless nature of it, you half program for that and at professional level it’s all time pressures, where you’re constantly trying to get ahead of it. Then you’ll have to analysts doing the same job with one analyst on this job and another on the game ahead of it, and it’s the same for the fellas doing the reviews and everybody. All of that is in a very good place and people know what their role and responsibility is, and everybody is really important.
I think just being in that building, every single day, you’re probably learning loads of lessons every day. There’s no one thing.
MM: Let’s talk about the style of play, it was very defensive, and you changed the game of football, everyone would attribute that to you. Now you’ve come in with new rules and looked at them deeply and you’ve come up with a far more attacking plan. It shows the mindset you bring, and the brilliance you look at things.
JMcG: I’m not sure about that in the sense that we were in a certain spot in 2011 and I was apart of that process as a player, and I think a lot of the decisions we made were not to set out to change Gaelic football certainly. It was the fact that we had been in probably five Ulster finals and lost them all, and every singly time expectation levels were high, we imploded. That was always very, very difficult. So when I went in, having played with all those players and knowing the psychology of a lot of the situations, and had experienced it myself, I just felt that the important thing for that group was not to be haemorrhaging heavy defeats. And if we could get the defensive part right from the very beginning, then we can build momentum, energy and an attacking plan.
We came up short in 2011 and I think our scoring average was 11.5 points per game, and I remember going back and looking at all the games from that year and then looking at the All-Ireland champions who won it and it was 17 points. Then looking at the previous years and it was around 17.5. If you wanted to win the All-Ireland, that was the number. We had a lot of sole searching over that winter as well because we didn’t perform in the semi-final in the way we were expecting to, and we knew that certain things offensively had to happen and had to change so we basically started chasing 17.5 and believe it or not, that’s the number we ended up at when we won it. We added on five attacking points to the team in year two.
It was nothing more than that. This is where we’re at, how do we protect them in the short-term, psychologically more than anything else, so that heavy defeat doesn’t come in the door. Then we just became really good at defending and then we started to add on the other layers.
Then in that 2011 season, we only conceded 8.5 points on average throughout the championship. So I am confident in saying is that record will probably stand for a long time to come. When you look at scorelines like Sunday, I think it will be a very long time before we see 8.5 points per championship match again.
MM: Are you enjoying this term, your second coming, more than your first? You are proving yourself, Donegal have proven themselves; but is it more enjoyable in some way?
JMcG: I suppose I am more experienced and there was a bit of the fan in me the first time around, because we all had not experienced it [before], and then you were a part of the process but also enjoying the process. Then I think with age naturally anyway, I think that steadiness comes with age. Back to the conversation about being in professional sport, no matter if you beat Rangers and the experience of that is amazing, you’re onto the next game. That’s just the way it is, so you just have to double down and focus. It’s brilliant to win at the weekend, but the reality was that you’re absolutely focused and having focused conversations on Kerry on the way home on the bus.
MM: How important was it, having looked at and analysed the new rules, with Michael Murphy having been a part of the Football Review Committee, to persuade Michael Murphy to come back? Was that difficult, and what kind of response did you get?
JMcG: It wasn’t difficult, the response didn’t take long at all. I think that’s a question for Michael more than me. But in terms of Michael and his decision to come back, I don’t believe that he wouldn’t have come back had he thought he wouldn’t be able to perform. So, I think in the back of his mind, if he was going to make that decision, he knew he was going to be able to do it, and I knew that as well.
That was an important part, and all of the things that he brings, on and off the pitch, are hugely important. Also, with the other players that we persuaded to come back in this year, depth was an issue last year where we ran out of steam in the last quarter of the semi-final. I suppose in many respects on Sunday we were putting in quality players into the game in the last quarter which was probably the biggest learning from last year.
MM: Will Michael be okay for the final? There were doubts about an injury.
JMcG: He’s fine.
MM: Talk to me about facing Kerry now, and facing Jack O’Connor, who has won several All-Ireland titles. Is that a challenge? They’ll say Kerry did it in 2014, but yet this seems to be different. You’re coming into your 11th championship match and facing Kerry. Is that an opportunity, or is it in your head about 2014, or does it matter?
JMcG: No, 2014 is definitely not in my head because it’s literally a different game. There’s just no comparison whatsoever. I think for the players there is a challenge there because it is Kerry and for many counties the Kerry jersey puts a sense of fear or a sense of dread in them. Then on a basic, practical level, you’re facing a team in their third final in four years and they’ve huge experience in Croke Park and All-Ireland final day. For our lads, they wake up on the first of January and they’re dreaming of maybe doing something that season and having a brilliant year. Then Kerry or Dublin for example are waking up on the first of January and expecting to do it. That’s the first barrier you have to overcome in terms of actually winning the final; that psychological challenge.
So it’s brilliant to be there, but for the players and supporters, it’s the best day of their lives if you win it; and probably one of the worst days if you lose it. That’s just the way it is. No body knows that more than Kerry because they’ve been part of this day so many times.
MM: We talked about Michael Murphy, but the other guy we need to talk about is David Clifford. How are you going to cope with him. He scored a goal and nine points against Tyrone. Can you reveal to us your plan?
JMcG: I don’t have a plan at the minute; we’re in the process of that. Bringing all the information together and trying to come up with a plan. He’s so exciting and he’s got a lot of fans in our house as well. With the way he plays he has just been electric this year, a real livewire, and showing unbelievable leadership, skill levels, all of those things. Then with his brother [Paudie], when you’re talking about players, there’s players and then there’s marquee players and I think Paudie is an exceptional player as is Seán O’Shea. Those players are elite inter-county players, and David probably will be one of the best or the best to have ever played the game. Obviously, time will tell on that whenever his boots are hung up but certainly that challenge is formidable.
We will have to try and manage that the best we can. You’re facing David and you’re facing the prospect of Kerry that know their way around an All-Ireland final. At the same time, our fellas have to understand that there’s an opportunity for them as well and that they have to try and go out and take that opportunity as well and express themselves and play the way they know that they can play, and try their best to get that level out of themselves.
I think if we do that, you’re in that battle and we will roll with the punches then.
