PADDY McBrearty hailed Jim McGuinness for ending Donegal’s era of underachievement after they blitzed Meath at Croke Park to advance to a first All-Ireland SFC final in 11 years.
Having suffered an agonising semi-final loss to Galway last summer, McGuinness’ side are now braced for a repeat of the 2014 decider against Kerry.
And McBrearty said: “When we left here in 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.”
Boss McGuinness, who guided Donegal to Sam Maguire glory in 2012, stepped down after the three-point defeat to Kerry in the final two years later. However, he returned or a second stint as gaffer last season.
Veteran forward McBrearty, 31, who scored 0-3 off the bench yesterday, continued: “When Jim came back, obviously the standards were raised back to where they were and we’re just delighted to be back here.
“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 get over the big days.
“Getting this man back obviously helped with that and getting back to days like this day in two weeks is going to be massive.”
McGuinness was thrilled with his side for enduring ‘a long road back’ as they hit top gear to put Meath to the sword.
He said: “We spoke about it as coaches in the hotel this morning, that it feels like there’s a performance in them.
“Because a lot of the things we were looking to achieve in the game, there was a consistency in our training.
“That’s brilliant and obviously we get another two weeks now into the final and hopefully we can go down the same road.”
Opponents Kerry will look to be crowned All-Ireland champions for the first time since 2022 having reached the decider thanks to a six-point victory over Tyrone on Saturday.
McGuinness commented: “They just have a lot of quality. They have a lot of skill level. They’re playing for each other.
“You can see that they’re very united and very together. I thought their interviews were very balanced and very controlled and they’re on a bit of a mission themselves.
“It’s great for us. It’s a great challenge, we’re looking forward to it. We’ll have to get the heads down now, get down the road and start that process as quickly as we can and look forward to it.”
McGuinness also confirmed that 35-year-old Michael Murphy did not suffer an injury after he was substituted in the 45th minute of the 20-point rout of the Royals.
He explained: “He’s good. I suppose the strength of the group at the moment is the squad and everybody’s pushing really, really hard.
“There’s a couple of lads there that have trained really well that didn’t get on.
“There’s good competition for places and we’ll be back to ground zero on Tuesday night in terms of that now.”
