Before all of this, there was another time.
Moments after Donegal’s All-Ireland quarter-final win over Louth a fortnight ago, a restless Jim McGuinness was eager to end his post-match press conference and pop back outside to watch Kerry against Derry.
He wanted to get fresh eyes on Donegal’s possible semi-final opponents, but when McGuinness was told the GAA’s convoluted web of avoiding repeat pairings had already determined the Ulster champions would be playing Galway, his disposition softened.
“Definitely?” he asked. The gallery nodded and McGuinness started to smile. “Okay, so I know Pádraic Joyce very well.”
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McGuinness and Joyce became friends in Tralee while studying and playing Sigerson Cup football together. A bond created in the late 1990s that has endured.
Joyce was on the college’s breakthrough team that won Tralee’s (then called Tralee Regional Technical College) maiden Sigerson Cup in March of 1997. McGuinness – who had gone back to complete his Leaving Cert at the age of 24 – signed up for a Health and Leisure course in Tralee the following term, and his decision would prove to be a footballing education as much as anything else.
The following season, McGuinness and Joyce were part of a star-studded IT Tralee team which also included Kerry pair Seamus Moynihan and Mike Frank Russell, Galway’s Michael Donnellan and Kildare’s Damien Hendy. They won the Sigerson Cup in March, 1998.
Twelve months later, McGuinness captained the team to retain the title, and while Joyce was suspended for the finals weekend, he travelled with the group to Belfast.
Val Andrews was the manager for the 1997 and 1998 triumphs, while Vinny O’Shea had taken over for the 1999 success. Fr Pat O’Donnell was chaplain in the college at the time but also doubled as a general helper-outer with the footballers. He was a selector on the 1999 team.
“Once you got to know those two lads you realised they were born leaders, they stood out,” Fr O’Donnell recalls.
“You’d always know when Jimmy was walking down the corridor because the whole place would come alive – he was a sort of larger than life character.
“Joycey would walk down the same corridor, people mightn’t notice him as much, but you knew he was a leader in how he carried himself. They were leaders in different ways.
“They have both become very good football managers but also they are really good man managers, they’d have great empathy. They’d bring the best out of players.”
Those who played alongside Joyce during that 1996-97 Sigerson campaign could not understand how he was not part of Galway’s plans. It was only after that success the call came from Galway.
“I used to love watching Joycey in challenge games because he would do stuff just for the fun of it, lobbing the keeper from 20 yards out, that kind of stuff,” adds Fr O’Donnell. “Like the kid [Lamine Yamal] from Spain, he just played with this freedom and energy, he had all the touches.
“He was very driven and very organised. Even in his student house, Joycey would have put together a rota for who was doing the cooking and who was doing the cleaning, he’d have it all delegated.
“And they weren’t just good footballers, they were also both good students, they’d want to get their projects done.
“I remember praising one of them, not sure which of them it was, for working hard outside of football and they replied: ‘If you are not organised off the field, you won’t be organised on it.’ That’s the kind of people they are.”
McGuinness and Joyce remained friends after they left Tralee, though their pathways naturally veered off in different directions.
Joyce was still playing for Galway when McGuinness was appointed Donegal manager for 2011 – but the counties were about to head off in different trajectories at that time and they didn’t meet in competitive fare.
Just two months after McGuinness led Donegal to All-Ireland glory in September 2012, Joyce announced his intercounty retirement. His last game had been a qualifier defeat to Antrim at Casement Park that July.
Galway operated in Division One this season while Donegal played in Division Two, so Sunday will finally see McGuinness and Joyce share a sideline.
Not that McGuinness hasn’t shared a pitch with Joyce or indeed the Galway players. In October 2020, Joyce asked his old college friend to take a Galway training session in Tuam before the National League restarting in that covid-impacted season.
A brief video of the former Donegal manager putting the Galway players through their paces in a linear hand-passing drill emerged online, much to the annoyance of both Joyce and McGuinness.
Speaking on the Smaller Fish podcast this week, Eamonn Brannigan – who was one of the Galway players involved that day – offered an interesting insight to the session.
“There was nothing he done that was much different than any other coach that I have had, but it was the intensity and what he expected that he brought was something that I definitely hadn’t trained at that level before,” Brannigan said.
“I remember leaving training that day, I was like, ‘Is this what Donegal had done every single time, three times a week, to win an All-Ireland?’ I was taken aback a bit.”
Brannigan’s sole experience aligns with Ryan McHugh’s more comprehensive exposure to training under McGuinness.
“Whenever somebody asks me what is Jim’s best quality or what separates Jim from the rest, it’s that word – drive,” remarked McHugh in May.
“I can say Jim McGuinness is exactly the same the night before an All-Ireland final as he is the first night you meet in December or whenever it is. He’s on it every single night and he doesn’t let you or anybody else not be on it.”
Fr O’Donnell remembers sitting at home tuning in for a Donegal match at Croke Park in the early noughties. At the time, he was going through cancer treatment.
“Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh was commentating on the game and all of a sudden he says, ‘Jim McGuinness wants to send out his best wishes to Fr Pat.’ It showed real kindness, that little message gave me a boost and helped me a lot in the months that followed.”
When McGuinness was appointed Donegal manager for the 2011 season, Fr O’Donnell had no doubt that success would follow. In fact, he believed the Anglo Celt Cup would be wrestled back to Donegal in that first year.
Fr O’Donnell remembers a conversation he had at the time with a friend who was involved in rowing. They were discussing the role of the cox in a boat.
“I was saying that they make all the difference, they keep you together,” says Fr O’Donnell.
“I said, ‘I’ll give you an example of what difference an individual can make. Donegal have not been going great recently but they have a fellah taking over called Jimmy McGuinness, and they will certainly win Ulster, and maybe more.’
“For my birthday I was handed a docket that year for Donegal to win Ulster at about 8- or 9-1.
“I always remember Jimmy, when he was captain in Tralee, whenever he talked to the team you’d feel the hairs standing up on the back of your neck.”
While McGuinness is in his first season back in intercounty management, this is Joyce’s fifth year with the Tribesmen, and there has been a noticeable evolution of their playing style during that period.
Indeed, Galway’s approach is something McGuinness referenced when writing as a columnist for The Irish Times.
Just 12 months ago, he wrote: “When I sat down to consider Joyce’s Galway reign, there are almost two phases to the team – pre-Covid Galway and post-Covid Galway.
“Pre-Covid Galway really shook the game up for a short period, there was a return to a very traditional, dynamic, attacking style. Indeed, it looked for a moment Galway might even redefine where football was going.
“Then Covid hit and the Tribesmen struggled initially when games returned. During that period, I think an element of pragmatism came through the door for the Galway management and they seemed to fall in line with the game’s dominant trends – defensive structures, possession style and established attack.
“They were not as dynamic or swashbuckling as version one under Joyce, but over time version two Galway certainly became very effective.”
McGuinness now gets to test Galway’s effectiveness on Sunday.
Towards the end of the press conference after the Louth match two weeks ago, he remarked that if Donegal do not manage to win the All-Ireland this year, he’d like to see Galway go all the way.
“If we couldn’t win it, I’d be delighted for PJ and Galway, we had great times together,” said McGuinness.
Fr O’Donnell is not surprised to hear McGuinness articulate such an opinion openly about a rival team and a rival manager.
“That would be genuine from Jimmy,” he says. “There would be unbelievable respect between the two of them, they kind of get each other, they understand each other.”
And both will understand that for this weekend at least, their time together in Tralee must be consigned to another time. Because on Sunday, they both can’t win, it can only either be Donegal or Galway’s time.
