Christy O'Connor Talking Points: McHugh looking to do something no player has done in at least a century – if ever
X-FACTOR: Ryan McHugh can make history if Donegal win - he will have an All-Ireland medal 11 years on from having played in his first final.
When Donegal won the 2012 All-Ireland, Ryan McHugh was the county minor captain. McHugh was in a similar position to Patrick McBrearty the previous year, a uniquely talented player destined to play senior. It was never a matter of if with McHugh and McBrearty, just when.
Jim McGuinness fast-tracked McBrearty’s progression to the senior team, introducing him as a substitute in the first round of the 2011 Ulster championship against Antrim, just an hour after McBrearty had already played for the minors against Antrim.
Donegal were beaten in that minor game which paved the way for McGuinness to start McBrearty in the senior’s next game against Cavan. He was big, strong and powerful for his age, with the X-factor talent to match those qualities. By the end of the Ulster championship, McBrearty had managed something rarely achieved by a young player in the last 60 years – winning a senior provincial medal while still a minor.
McHugh was possibly good enough to do something similar in 2012, certainly as a panellist, but he was physically smaller than McBrearty and McGuinness didn’t call him into the squad after Donegal lost the Ulster minor quarter-final to Derry that May. McGuinness handed McHugh his league debut in February 2013 before he made his championship debut against Down that summer.
By 2014, McHugh had already become a pivotal player for Donegal at just 20. He was Young Footballer-of-the-Year that season as Donegal reached the All-Ireland final. Losing to Kerry denied McHugh the chance to emulate his brother Mark and father Martin, both of whom had won All-Irelands in 2012 and 1992.
“It makes it tough at the breakfast table and dinner table at home, because Dad and Mark have one,” Ryan said recently. “But listen, it’s all part of it. Personally I feel like I’ve had a great career with Donegal. No regrets, well obviously an All-Ireland final is a big regret.”
Now that McHugh has a chance to atone for that 2014 final defeat, he is also looking to do something no other player has managed in the last 100 years; win an All-Ireland medal 11 years on from having played in his first final.
The last two players that came anywhere close to managing that feat were Peter Canavan and Chris Lawn. Both featured on the Tyrone team that won the 2003 All-Ireland, eight years after they’d played on the side which lost the 1995 final to Dublin.
In 2007, Nicholas Murphy and Anthony Lynch were also trying to bridge that eight year gap between first and second final appearances, but Cork didn’t get it done in either final. After losing to Meath in 1999, Murphy and Lynch also experienced that bitter taste of defeat in the 2007 decider against Kerry.
Mayo’s David Brady also went eight years between his first and second final appearances. After playing in the 1996 drawn and replayed finals against Meath, Brady missed the 1997 decider due to a broken leg, before playing again in the 2004 final, which Mayo lost to Kerry.
A handful of Brady’s team-mates went seven years between final appearances in 1997 and 2004 – Ciarán McDonald, Peter Burke and David Heaney. Trevor Mortimer and James Nallen also played on those teams but Mortimer and Nallen played in their second final in 1997 just a year after playing their first.
Tommy Carr captained Dublin in the 1992 All-Ireland final, which they lost to Donegal, seven years after Carr had come on in the 1985 final loss to Kerry.
Only three players come close to McHugh in terms of the length between those first and second final appearances. Galway’s John Tobin played in the 1974 and 1983 finals, with Galway losing both games to Dublin. Tobin didn’t play in the 1973 final which Galway lost to Cork. Johnny Hughes played in three losing finals for Galway between 1973-’83 but his second final appearance came a year after his first.
Offaly’s Seán Lowry went nine years between his first and second final appearances, 1972 and 1981 (he was an unused sub in 1971). Seamus Darby had to wait a year longer, playing in his first final in 1972 (he was an unused sub in 1971) and his second in 1982, when Darby wrote his name into lore for scoring the goal that denied Kerry the 5-in-row.
Across the last 100 years, a small number of players did appear in their second final a handful of years after their first, but none have gone as long as McHugh without playing in that second final during that search for a coveted Celtic Cross.
Eleven years on from the 2014 final, McBrearty and Michael Murphy are desperately trying to win that second medal. Still, at least they have one from their first final appearance in 2012. McHugh doesn’t have one of those cherished Celtic Cross medals – not yet anyway.
And winning one now 11 years later would be a remarkable way to end that quest.
As soon as Jim McGuinness returned home to Donegal for a second term at the outset of 2024, one of the most intriguing subplots was around how much his soccer experience could really benefit the squad.
Being the first UEFA Pro-licence holder to manage an inter-county team, what could McGuinness really bring with him from that world?
McGuinness was the most influential footballing figure in the last decade in how he changed and shaped the game during his first four years with Donegal. McGuinness has a rare tactical worldliness and acumen, but the game has tactically evolved at such a rate since that he no longer had the same space to be radical and revolutionary.
McGuinness couldn’t expect to get the same bounce or advantage out of S&C that he had in his first coming. Soccer data and performance analysis is incredibly detailed but GAA data analytics had also become highly advanced.
The biggest challenge for McGuinness was in trying to identify gaps, internally and in the opposition, and then try and find a solution to fill them.
It’s no longer easy to keep powder dry in a tactical arms race but the innovations and inventions now are more subtle and nuanced. Yet McGuinness surely has something up his sleeve for Kerry. And the real profit could be in the subtleties of McGuinness’s coaching detail.
McGuinness is bound to have prepared for the Kerry kickout in the second half. Once the game opens up after half-time, Shane Ryan is close to consistently getting off 100 per cent of his own short restarts.
Kerry really profit off the bunch-and-break kickout around their own 45 because Ryan is so adept at kicking off both feet, right foot instep, left foot instep, which stretches the opposition’s zonal press and allows Kerry to get late runners off the top of the 2-point arc, particularly Paul Murphy and Brian Ó Beaglaoich.
Donegal will aggressively go after the Kerry kickout in the second quarter, but they’ll also have to have a different plan around their press for the second half, something that Kerry won’t have seen before. Tweaking or readjusting the set up and structure of Donegal’s press for the second half will also negate Kerry’s capacity to sort it out in the dressingroom at half-time.
Donegal will want Ryan to see a different picture after the break. And McGuinness will try and make that picture as bleak and dark as he possibly can.
When Jack O’Connor spoke to the media after his Kerry side had beaten Armagh in the All-Ireland quarter-final, he cut loose just like his players had over an hour earlier. O’Connor clearly wanted to get some stuff off his chest. Kerry had been written off. Armagh had been written up. Kerry were being portrayed as a one-man team. Proving people wrong has always been a huge motivation for O’Connor but he didn’t spare the rod on some of his own.
“Unfortunately a few pundits down our way let themselves down,” he said. “What’s to be gained by slating people? I’m in the business of building people up. I’m not in the business of knocking people. I spent all my life coaching underage, schools, minors, under-21s, seniors – every level.”
O’Connor certainly has. It’s 33 years since he first appeared as a selector with the Kerry under-21s. After being a selector with the Kerry seniors under Paidí Ó Sé in 1997 when Kerry won the senior All-Ireland, O’Connor managed a Kerry team to his first All-Ireland when he led the U21s to the 1998 title. He almost managed to win successive titles in 1999 but Westmeath beat them in the final. A year later, O’Connor was back on board again with Ó Sé when the seniors won another All-Ireland.
Along with Mickey Harte, O’Connor is the only manager to guide teams to All-Ireland minor, U21 and senior titles. As a minor, U21 and senior manager, O’Connor has managed Kerry teams to seven All-Irelands. As a manager and selector, Sunday will be O’Connor’s 10th senior final involvement.
A fifth senior title now would make O’Connor the third most decorated manager in history, after Mick O’Dwyer and Jim Gavin. O’Connor is already joint-third but another win on Sunday would edge O’Connor into outright third ahead of Seán Boylan, the great Meath manager.
