MOST MANAGERS TEND to keep their ideas – their philosophy if you wish – of how to play the game locked securely away in a file they only open when in the company of players and backroom staff.
Jim McGuinness does not do that. Although there is much he does not say, he pulls back the curtain more than practically any other manager about the nuts and bolts of the game.
During the week, McGuinness granted a wide-ranging interview with Highland Radio for their ‘DL Debate’ podcast with his former team mate Brendan Devenney asking the questions.
Devenney probed him on styles of play and how they might change from his last time in charge. McGuinness spoke of how teams set their defensive shape when not in possession, and then having to track all the runners coming from deep.
The danger of that, he explained, is that you set yourself into what they call in soccer, ‘a low block.’ And that wasn’t desirable.
To generalise, he felt there were times they would let the opponent have the ball, and others when they would be applying the pressure higher up the field. It was something he had written about previously for in his newspaper column and during punditry.
You can have all philosophies and fancy systems you want. Sometimes you just have to do the sensible thing. In a big Donegal gale, you want a sensible man in charge of the mainsail.
Cork won the toss for this game and elected to play into the teeth of those gusts for the first half.
How did Donegal respond? By pushing hard in a man-for-man formation against the Cork kickout.
Goalkeeper Patrick Doyle was making his debut. His second kickout tailed to the left and out over the sideline. The third kickout went out at the exact same spot. Ciaran Thompson caught the fourth and referee Noel Mooney spotted a transgression inside and gave a free in for Donegal.
At the end of those head-spinning eight minutes, Donegal were already 0-4 to 0-0 ahead.
They got back level with a 1-1 salvo within two minutes but for the last 15 minutes of the half, Donegal let fly every time they came within 50 metres of the Cork goal.
They scored 0-8 from play and only one from Ryan McHugh tailed wide. Nine shots in 15 minutes.
Odhran Doherty secured a Man of the Match award off the back of his wonderful trio of points in this manner.
At the break, we were reacquainted with another old favourite of McGuinness’s that is as old as the Donegal hills. With the rain gushing down, Cork players were out on the field waiting for battle to recommence. And they waited. And they waited.
We’ve seen that one before too. Instead of getting the fast start they needed, Donegal pinned them back with two early points before a complete deluge landed down and killed any chance of a revival.
Cork are a running team. They are also worryingly one-dimensional. When they needed to be getting a dozen shots off, they declined, although manager John Cleary said afterwards, “I’m not making excuses, there was a gale there in the first half but when we came out after half time, the wind seemed to have died considerably.”
We won’t dispute that the wind died down, but it certainly was still there enough that Donegal had to run the ball through their hands for the second half.
And in doing so, they drew fouls on Dáire Ó Baoill, Jamie Brennan, Ciaran Thompson and others. Patrick McBrearty and goalkeeper Gavin Mulreany once were on hand to convert the frees.
Breaking lines brought its own reward, as McGuinness explained afterwards.
“Without going too deep into it, one of my things looking at Donegal in recent times was that when the ball was won, it went lateral. Even today we could have done that better and been more dangerous,” he said.
“I speak about ‘transitional football’ and that’s very, very closely linked to it. We want to be aggressive, get up the field and ask questions of teams. It wasn’t perfect today but in the second half, those spaces started opening up and we were able to make good quality incisions and get the ball over the bar.
“Listen, the bottom line is that the way teams set up nowadays, you have to be able to do both. In the second half, the closing stages of the game, we did do that well – we kept the ball well, controlled the game whenever they needed the ball. You do have to do both but you also have to have your own belief system and values about how you want to play the game.”
In the post-match conflabs, the absent players for Donegal went something like this: Shaun Patton, Caolan Ward, Hugh McFadden, Jason McGee, Michael Langan, Niall O’Donnell, Connor O’Donnell, Caolan McColgan.
Before the game started, Oisin Gallen was withdrawn with a tight hamstring. Eoghan Bán Gallagher was introduced as a sub. Stephen McMenamin remained on the bench.
McGuinness maintains that a good return from the league will be if he finds new players.
Consider this a good start.