At last, at last...an end to the tedious soft-shoe shuffle of mutual praise and the ‘we’re taking nothing-for-granted’ cuteness that has characterised the build-up to big GAA championship matches for years. At last, an end to the doff-your-cap-and-whatever-you-say-say-nothing phoney-ness which opposing managers pass off as honest comment for all too long. At last, a week of spiky if civilised opinion which suggest that the backroom teams from Donegal and Mayo want to win Sunday’s quarter final so much that it hurts them.

At last an exchange of views which have lit up the online boards – should Jim McGuinness have said this and should James Horan have said that and should Rory Gallagher have said the other – which highlights just how unforgivably asinine and rehearsed the normal exchange of pre-match comments have become; remarks which are so dully worthy and insincere that players and managers alike cannot hide their boredom even as they utter them.

At last a week which laid bare the naked antagonism and rivalry which keeps the GAA flame burning and makes it such a strange and wonderful anomaly in a world dominated by the blandness of professional sport. At last a GAA championship week which shows it is okay to speak your mind!

Let this be the end of the paranoia which has transformed too many naturally loquacious GAA men into what Mae West brilliantly described as the "strong silent type with much to be silent about".

Usual platitudes
Let this mark an end to the suppression of honest opinion, the fear of talking yourself up because of how the opposition might perceive it. Let this be an end to the usual platitudes – "they put it up to us in the first half", "sure we got the bit of luck", "and thank God we got over the line".

Let it be an end to the painful MOTM interviews when players stand in front of garish advertising boards and behave as if the Stasi are interrogating them as they attempt to answer the leading questions – “Well, you scored 3-15...it went well for you out there?”– without appearing vain or boastful or saying anything that could land them in the dock with their manager who is paranoid with fear that his players should say anything remotely original.

And while we are at it, let this be an end to the interminable inspirational quotes a la John Wooden. John Wooden would be mystified as to how, after decades spent happily coaching hoops at UCLA, he has become a touchstone for GAA coaches in Ireland.

When it comes to quotes, give me Bobby Knight – the Antichrist of college basketball – who offered this pearl of wisdom to the world: “When my time on earth is gone and my activities here have passed, I want them to bury me upside down so the critics can kiss my ass.”

So let this brief machine-gun fire of words between Mayo and Donegal embolden a new honesty within GAA conversations. That is all that happened this week. It is significant that Mayo and Donegal, above all counties, should have become involved in this exchange. Both counties have come from a similar place.

Donegal were regarded, let it not be forgotten, as a tragi-comic carnival: half football team, half stag party. Mayo were often portrayed as something even worse. Mayo were accused of being chokers, of being too nice. And nice guys, as Glen Campbell tells us, get washed away like the snow and the rain.

Both counties, coincidentally, happened to simultaneously appoint young, driven managers both of whom retain vivid memories of the respective hurts and slights they experienced as players.

Both have done phenomenal jobs in changing not just their teams’ consistency but the prevailing image of their county.

Who is laughing at Donegal now? Who dares call Mayo dandies now? And both men are unusually direct in what they say. They answer questions honestly. It doesn’t matter whether you meet Horan or McGuinness in a press room in August or on the side of a pitch on a grim day in February. They both speak their mind.

The original controversy, over McGuinness's comments regarding the injury picked up by Mark McHugh is interesting. It is hard to believe that if, God forbid, a marquee Dublin or Kerry forward – Bernard Brogan or Colm Cooper – spent a couple of nights in hospital with concussion and a perforated ear drum that it would not have merited a discussion on that night's Sunday Game. But that is what happened in relation to McHugh. The incident was cut out of the highlights.

Direct question
Is McGuinness, in response to a question, not entitled to say he is unhappy about a tackle that caused this kind of injury?

And similarly, James Horan said what he said about Donegal because he was asked a question. And he didn’t feel like hiding his views. So he answered with perfect candour and respect. On Thursday, Rory Gallagher – again, one assumes in response to a direct question – suggested the Mayo and Monaghan managers had had a cosy chat before the Ulster final. The use of the word ‘colluded’ was probably mischievous on Gallagher’s part. But so what? He said what he felt. It all adds to the spice of it.

So give me a bit of mischief and honest exchange any day over the excruciating blandness that has come to pass for managerial views. Even if McGuinness and Horan both quit tonight they would leave a rich legacy in deed and in word.

Take McGuinness on the 2011 extra -time win over Kildare in the twilight: “To me, that was living. People are very rarely ‘alive’.” Or Horan, with his brilliantly droll way of downplaying everything when asked what Mayo would do in the All-Ireland final: “We’re going to have to try and score more than them.”

This week, McGuinness and Horan are standing with their teams at a narrow revolving door that is spinning at a frantic rate. Both must go for it at the same time. Words will fly. Honest, interesting words.

Mayo and Donegal, the perpetual nice guys of Gaelic games, are giving two fingers to the world. And all it means is this: You wouldn’t want to meet either team coming at you down the tracks.

And you know you don’t want to miss this match for anything.