CHAMPIONSHIP 2002/Ulster SF - Donegal v Down: Keith Duggan talks to a footballer who is enjoying his football again after the death of his brother and Donegal's championship setbacks
A decade in the life of Jim McGuinness and mostly, it comes down to football. When he was 18, he was asked on to the Donegal panel by Brian McEniff and found himself with an All-Ireland medal before he had even put in a full season. Jim was callow but he had studied the county team long enough to know by heart the players who had just missed out, having fallen away through injury or sheer heartache after years and years.
"Boys," he says now, "who would have missed out on it by as little as six months. And here was I, who had proven nothing. I wasn't even old enough then to know." He was just swept away by it all. See him as he was 10 years ago, late on the night of September 23rd, many hours after they walked the Sam Maguire across the Drowes river, a symbolic crossing point for Donegal's only ever All-Ireland championship.
Thousands of hugs and speeches and bonfires later, he found himself in the Abbey Hotel along with, it seemed, the rest of the county. Walking on air, getting the glad eye from the girls. He remembers looking at his watch and it was 6.15 a.m. The disco was still going strong and in the lobby, four or five lads were talking to this garda. They were drunk and taking his cap and putting it on their own heads. Doing impromptu jigs. The garda was laughing. The hotel staff brought down blankets for the hundreds of people who had abandoned thoughts of home and as morning rose, they snuggled up in the lobby, on the dance floor, under tables. Or some did. Others kept on going. The team began another emotional procession across to Ardara and Glenties before moving on to Glen and Kilcar and further north. It was like the county was reborn. Normal life was suspended. This, thought Jim McGuinness, is what it's all about . . .
The dark curls that Jim used to let run wild have been shorn. Gone, too, is the beard and now, he looks more the conventional GAA player, tidy and lean with the ravenous, hollowed cheeks of an athlete. He looks well and says he is happy, enjoying the game more than he has for a long time. The very least that can be said for McGuinness is he has been loyal, a true disciple to a football life that ultimately has had very little to do with the already mythical days of autumn, 1992.
"Ten years," says Jim. "It isn't a long time but I suppose it can be for people looking in. That All-Ireland is still very close to the surface in Donegal, it is still very alive in people's memories." Except that now, Jim is about the only one left. As the autumns passed, the senior men like Martin McHugh, Anthony Molloy, big Murray, John Joe and Tony Boyle, who had all seemed immortal and magnified to him, just stopped coming back for the new season.
One by one, they disappeared. Noel Hegarty, the grizzled maverick from Glen was the last to go, calling it quits after last summer's championship loss against Kildare in Newbridge. Donegal had been beaten narrowly - again - and the primarily young team was devastated. But in the dressing room Mickey Moran, the Donegal manager, made a quiet speech marking Hegarty's distinguished service with the county.
"And we all turned to look at Noel to hear what he would say. You know the way you imagine your retirement to be this wild emotional moment? Well, Noel just raised the two arms in the air and shouted, "Hal-le-fuckin'- lu-jah.' As if to say well, that's those 15 years out of the way. I was sitting beside him and I just looked at him. I thought it was one of the best things I'd ever heard."
McGuinness was a team leader by then, having moved from the margins over the years to take up the slack over a frustrating period. It seemed Donegal's sense of invincibility evaporated once the lions of '92 bade farewell. Always, the team played pretty football and always they could challenge the best. But the natural breaks of the game betrayed them. They lost league finals and followed up days of startling championship glory with bum shows. Slowly and gently, they began to slip. There is, of course, a precise moment he pinpoints as the still point around which his football life revolves. The Ulster final against Derry in 1998, when Donegal, seconds from their first title in six years, fatally gave Derry room just once and watched as Joe Brolly scored a goal that seemed to unfold in slow motion. Joe blowing kisses to the fans. The final score was 1-7 to 0-8.
"It was like a nightmare,"says Jim. "Definitely the biggest disappointment of my football life. Literally one minute before that, I had won a ball and slipped it to someone and I thought, 'that's it, he's going to stick it over the bar, we have it'. Next thing, I'm watching Derry celebrating. You know, just like that, your whole world crumbles."
And then, it actually did. A few weeks after that loss in Clones, on August 3rd, his brother Mark was driving Jim to Dublin airport. A few months of summer football beckoned in America. Not far from Clones, they were involved in an accident that took Mark's life. He was 27, just a couple of years older than Jim.
"He was like a best friend to me. A serious GAA man. He used to watch me everywhere. Mark used play midfield for the Glenties reserve team and he was a fairly good footballer, too, but he was probably a bit lazy and had a tendency to enjoy the good life. But he was everything to me and I'm still very fragile about it, to be honest. The GAA as a family-based unit really helped me then but when it came to the game, it took an awful lot out of me mentally. Because you work to get really fit and the big day comes and the one man you want to be there can't be there.
"And the thing was, I'd know where he used stand at games because me and him used stand in the exact same spots watching games together over the years. So I'd be lookin' in at the crowd and thinking . . ."
Now, he can admit he endured a couple of lost years following the tragedy. The family had known bereavement before, when Charles, another brother, died at a preciously young age from a heart condition in 1986. This was all that pain revisited along with the fresh anguish.
Jim struggled, trying to throw himself into the game, believing that's what Mark would have wanted him to do, knowing he would have kicked his arse out the door to training. "But I'd find myself drifting in games. Sometimes they'd just pass me by. When things went badly, it was all the worse but even if you won, the person you really wanted to share the enjoyment with wasn't there." His soul wasn't in it. Now he recognises a period when he burned the torch at both ends, numbing the grief with late nights on the beer and then trying to compensate with savage training sessions. When championships ended, he'd write the summer off and then have to start from scratch. That had never been his way. He was stretched taut. And if there was talk around the county, well, there was nothing he could do about it. He had no comeback because deep down, he knew things weren't going right.
Yet on the outside, he was the same as ever. Big Jim. "The gentle giant from Glenties" as he was recently described by The Follower, the iconic and long-standing columnist with the Donegal Democrat. Jim could hold a conversation and say the right thing while feeling a million miles away from where he stood.
"I think a few fellas knew I was going through a wild bad time of it. But only the likes of a best friend would say anything to you about it. You have to do a lot of soldiering on your own in a situation like that. And you know some people just break and away they go. So this year, I just said to myself it had to change. For my own sake and for Mark's sake, I had to just bang it out of my head for the 70 minutes of the match. And in the game against Cavan two weeks ago, I never thought about it at all. Thank God, it is getting a bit easier and we know we can cope a bit better. With the football,I know there is only a few years left now. All I wanted the last day was to play well and just win a game and when that happened, I was overjoyed."
A decade in the life of Jim McGuinness and mostly, it comes down to people. He has long since proven himself as a player, selfless and athletic and constant.
Now, Big Jim talks warmly and wonderfully about the people who helped shape him. GAA people. Brian McEniff, who gave him chance after chance. Tony Boyle, a friend. McHugh, the master, from whom he learned so much. Mark Crossan. "I can honestly say, hand on heart, I gave my whole life to football. But in saying that, it's been good. I got my scholarship to Tralee and Jordanstown which I probably would never have without the football."
He has this memory from shortly after the All-Ireland that best encapsulates how weird it felt to be a raw 18 year old from Glenties, suddenly moving in a world that seemed, in his innocence, like celebrity. "We were over in Scotland for a match against Mayo. I got a start and actually got man of the match. And Michael O Muircheartaigh was over commentating and Jack O'Shea was manager of Mayo. Afterwards, we were in the bar and the likes of these people were coming up and saying, "well done, Jim". And I was on this stool thinking, "No bloody way. Jack O'Shea knows my name! I thought this was the maddest thing ever." He finds the idea uproarious now, having long since stopped caring who does or doesn't know him. The important thing is he has discovered himself.
A story went round about McGuinness jogging in the middle of a snowstorm one Christmas Day a couple of years back. This was during the bad time. "I usually run this square route around the town. All I had was this T-shirt and shorts and half way round, these massive flakes came down. By the time I came through town, the street was white and I was white and cars were stopping, thinking 'this man isn't wise in the head'."
He always put in those solitary efforts but only recently has he begun to feel renewed. He stopped drinking on New Year's Eve and found he is enjoying the craic again. "Now, it's more even. You'd go for a run and give yourself a wee wink, just to say that's another couple on the back burner. And you just feel, I don't know, sort of good inside, kind of pure."
Jim McGuinness doesn't think in terms of seasons any more. Two years ago, after Donegal's first championship loss to Fermanagh in decades, he was heading across to Glenties in the family car believing he had had enough. Now, he is glad he persevered and now he says that every game carries a resonance. The seasons are no longer endless. In his more fanciful moments, though, this is what he wants.
"I know the likes of Padraic Joyce, boys like that who have won and lost All-Irelands. You talk to them and they are dealing with a bigger stage. A Connacht medal wouldn't mean so much to them now or a Munster medal to a Kerry man. But I swear, I'd carry a limp for the rest of my life to get an Ulster medal. Just to win the thing and lift that cup and head down the road on the bus with the boys. I think I would forget about 1998 if I got one. You can dream of All-Irelands all you like but you learn to be more realistic.
"And there is a fierce togetherness in this team now. No superstars. We have started to win close games again. And we had a right good night after beating Cavan. Because before that, I spoke and other people spoke about how long it had been since we won a first round game. That's a far cry from 1992 but it's pressure in its own right. And it meant a lot to us."
All this summer, there will be reunions to celebrate the boys of '92. McGuinness, back in Glenties now coaching youngsters, bumps into them every so often. He found himself refereeing an under 12 game with Martin Shovlin and Michael Gallagher the opposing managers. Gods no longer, just old dogs - bodies to pick up the jerseys and blow the whistle. They all enjoyed the moment.
He knows they still miss the eternal buzz that summer Sundays bring and believes he will too whenever the day comes. "Aye, when I decide to actually get a life," he laughs.
A decade on and big Jim takes nothing for granted. He gives thanks for the small blessing that come throw in, he will be at peace. The McGuinness family will be there as usual and deep down, there remains the ardent want for Mark's face in the crowd.
The one man he would want to be there, the one man he always will. And now, Jim doesn't have to look for him.
