Paddy McBrearty: Donegal underperformed in Jim McGuinness's absence

Donegal captain Patrick McBrearty admits the county underperformed in the 10 years between Jim McGuinness’s two periods as manager.

As the Ulster champions reached their first All-Ireland final in 11 years with an emphatic win over Meath, McBrearty admitted he didn’t think it would take that amount of time to return to Gaelic football’s ultimate stage.

“When we left here 2014, I didn’t think it would be 2024 until we reached our next semi-final. We massively, massively underachieved from ’14 to ’24 basically, in our eyes. When Jim came back, standards were raised back to where they were and we’re just delighted to be back here.

“But they were a barren couple of years. We were winning Ulsters, teams were tipping us to go on and win All-Irelands and we couldn’t do on the big days. Getting this man back (McGuinness beside him) obviously for that and getting back to days like this two weeks is going to be massive.”

As he looks to go one better than 2014 when Kerry were the better side, McGuinness said Donegal’s opponent’s heritage will be a factor on Sunday week.

“Going into play Kerry in an All-Ireland final, you're going to need every man that you've got. That's a huge challenge, and they're so confident about what they do and there's a rite of passage there almost, in terms of winning All-Irelands, so that's the first thing we're going to have to meet head on. But, certainly it, it'll not be 15 players, it'll be every single player that can get onto the pitch that'll be needed.”

As well as their display, McGuinness was impressed by the measured reaction of Kerry management and players to their victory over Tyrone on Saturday.

“They've just a lot of quality, they have a lot of a lot of skill level, they’re playing for each other, you can see that they're very united and they're very together.

“I thought their interviews were very balanced and very controlled and they're on a bit of a mission themselves. Listen, it's great for us, it's a great challenge, we're looking forward to it.”

McGuinness and his management team sensed there was a performance in the team having had a two-week break between games.

“So we spoke about it as coaches in the hotel this morning that it feels like there is a performance in them because a lot of the things that we were looking to achieve in the game, there was a consistency in our training.

“So that's brilliant and obviously we get another two weeks now into the final and hopefully we can go down the same road.”

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