Kieran Donaghy interview: North v south and the long, long trek up Orchard road
SINCE they teamed up Kieran Donaghy and Kieran McGeeney have had a running joke.
“When I went up first,” says Donaghy, “I told McGeeney, ‘I’m lucky. I’ll bring you luck!”
McGeeney hadn’t been a general of that kind. A Kildare team he brought from nowhere to national relevance lost a string of big games in heartbreaking fashion. Fortune hadn’t really been favouring him in Armagh either. In 2019, his fifth full year at the helm, they were knocked out after losing by only a point on the road to Mayo.
As it turned out that was the beginning of him reacquainting with Donaghy, Armagh’s rise but also their run of agonisingly-close defeats. After this year’s Ulster final, McGeeney found himself looking at Donaghy. The man might have won four All Irelands as a player with Kerry but as a coach with Armagh the team had now lost four championship games on penalties. “Where’s your f****n’ luck?!”
Yet a few months later sitting on the benches of a Croke Park dressing room, McGeeney found Donaghy grinning at him. “Told you I was lucky!”
McGeeney could only laugh.
This year's All-Ireland football title was won by a lot more than luck. But he had to concede, it probably did play a part, especially when it came to Donaghy.
Because what if he hadn’t been staying in the same Westport hotel as the team the night of that loss to Mayo in 2019? What if either Armagh or the Sky Sports team had opted to remain in Castlebar where that game had been played?
The pair of them would hardly have been together in that dressing room on July 24, 2024 anyway, with Sam Maguire for company.
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How did Armagh come about?
: It’s funny. The other day I was talking to Hugh Campbell, our sport psych guy. He’s incredible at what he does, easily the best I’ve easily come across in that field at inter-county level. He doesn’t just go to every field session. He goes to every gym session. Every weekend away. And he’s always taking photos quietly on his phone that might come in handy later, he’s always sending fellas little voice notes or messages. It might be a picture of a fella making a diving block with a message, ‘A play like this could be huge at the weekend.’ Small things like that is how you have huge plays like Joey McElroy’s block on Paul Conroy to win the All Ireland.
"Anyway, Hugh was talking about the foresight of Kieran to go after the likes of me and Conleith [Gilligan]. And he asked ‘Where did you come into his head?’ And then I reminded him of the night the three of us and a few others had a few drinks together in Westport.
"In 2019, I was working for Sky. My first year finished with Kerry. And we covered the game where Armagh lost to Mayo by a point but were brilliant. You could see after a difficult few years they were beginning to come with the likes of Rian [O’Neill]. The whole setting was great. A big Mayo crowd at home, a good travelling Armagh support, cracking game. I remember saying on Sky, ‘This is what championship is all about.’ So that night I was on a bit of a high. The Sky team – Brian [Carney], Peter [Canavan], Rachel [Wyse], Senan [Connell] and all the crew – were going out in Westport and I hadn’t been out in Westport before. So I was bounding down the stairs, running a bit late, when I bumped into Kieran. ‘Jesus man, ye were brilliant tonight. Played some beautiful football, kicking through the lines. Hard luck.’ He says, ‘Where are you going?’ I says, ‘Town.’ And he says, ‘Ah come on over and have a pint with us first.’ And I said I’d be delighted to. I’d been close enough to him on the International Rules tours but wouldn’t really have seen him since the last one I did in 2011."
: How did you become quite close to him over in Australia?
: There was an aura about him. And I have a habit of latching onto coaches who I think can raise my game, all the way from Aidan O’Connor with the 'C' team in Stacks to Russ Bradburd with [Tralee] Tigers, Jack [O’Connor] in ’06. And I was struck by how thoughtful Kieran was about the game. He’d ask you these probing questions and make you really think.
: How?
: On that 2011 tour, our full forward line was myself, Tommy Walsh and Michael Murphy. And McGeeney said to me, ‘Ye’re a bit samey, aren’t ye?’ And I said, ‘I don’t think so. We might be all 6’5” but Michael is this absolutely gifted footballer who can kick off both sides, give laser passes around the place. I’ll just catch it and slip it off to fellas. Tommy can probably do a bit of both but his real strength is turning and beating a guy.’ And Kieran says, ‘Yeah, but for it to work ye’ve to move around.’ And from that conversation you always had one of us drifting out. Sometimes we played as a spine. And it paid off. We won that series by 65 points.
: So you had that pint. Who was in your company?
: Hugh Campbell. Denis Hollywood. Denis is the glue guy of the Armagh setup. The best way to describe him is he works for Armagh underage by day, then he works for the Armagh seniors by night. And right away I enjoyed their company. One pint became two and even a third by which time I was really late and had to leave.
But I think they enjoyed my company as well. They had probably been down after losing the game but by now it was four or so hours later and you can’t be crying and sulking forever either. And I had probably come in with an injection of enthusiasm, raving about how good they and the game were.
: So did McGeeney mention anything to you that night about possibly coming on board?
: No. At the end we just clasped hands and hugged, wished him good luck next year, keep it going. I just remember having great fun with them and then slipping off. But it probably reminded him of Australia where he’d have seen the court jester I could be off the field, fining him for his long hair and that, then the competitor on it. So maybe it was what planted the seed with him. ‘Would Donaghy come up?’
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When did he actually ask you to come up?
: The following year. I was up in Dublin, saw a northern number come up on the phone, answered it and it was Geezer. And when he asked if I could talk the last thing I thought he’d mention was if I’d come up and coach Armagh.
I said, ‘Jesus, Geezer, how?!’ But he’d done his homework, read up on PST [Sports]. ‘I’ve seen some of the pitches you’ve built. How often are you on the road?’ I said, ‘Well I might be in the west on a Tuesday, be around Dublin and Meath on a Thursday.’ And he said, ‘Well that’s only an hour away from Armagh. You’d only have to do one night a week with us. Come up every second weekend. Do you do any pitches in the north?’ I said ‘We’d like to do more.’ He said, ‘Well this would probably help.’ He was cute how he sold it.
: Well, it’s one thing selling it to you. How did you sell it to Hilary?
: Her initial ‘What?!’ at the idea was a lot louder and worse than mine. But she recognised that I was on the start of a coaching journey. The year before I had been involved with the Galway hurlers and coached the Sigerson team in Tralee. And I said to her, ‘McGeeney is just unbelievable. I’ll learn so much from this man. I know it’s a bit of a trek but we’ll figure a way to do it.’
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: Your first year with them was a covid season. League played in May and June, championship straight knockout. You lost to Monaghan in a shootout. What did you learn and take from that game?
: I heard a podcast the other week where Aaron McKay spoke about me mentioning that game before we left the hotel for the [2024] All Ireland final. And my point was, ‘We’re never beaten. No matter a dire a situation is, we climb our way out of it.’ And I reeled off all these games where we did just that and the first one I listed was that 2021 game against Monaghan.
Monaghan scored four goals in 22 minutes on us before half-time. Our keeper [Blaine Hughes] had got Covid the night before so we’d to go with a debutant: Shane Magill, a young lad who is still with us, great around the dressing room, and has improved dramatically. And we didn’t help him that day with the way we let them run through us, playing little one-twos.
I remember us going into the dressing room at half-time and drawing up the press for the kickouts. ‘Lads, we’re not [just] pressing after frees. When the ball goes dead we have to be getting to these spots and we have to pin them in. Even it means taking the risk of [Rory] Beggan going long.’ And we came back from seven down to go ahead by two only for Monaghan to come again at the end. And I said it to the lads before the All Ireland this year. ‘Even though we lost, you showed what incredible courage and spirit you had to come back against a quality team like Monaghan were back then.’
What struck you about this Armagh group when you met them after being around serious groups like the Galway hurlers [in 2019] or obviously the Kerry teams that you played with?
: The way they challenged each other, pushed each other, how detail-oriented they were. Rory Grugan. Aidan Forker. Calling people out in a very honest way. ‘You’re not doing it in the gym. I’m looking at you and you’re just going through the motions.’ I was blown away by how hard they pushed themselves. In Kerry we’d the likes of [Aidan] O’Mahony, [Paul] Galvin, Séamus Moynihan who were doing all the weights, and then fellas who were kind of dabbling at them and could skip a session without a word been said about it.
I mean, when I look back at some of the ‘workouts’ Darragh [Ó Sé] and myself used to have! We would go in on our own, 60kgs, a little bump, bump, bump [smilingly mimics comfortably lifting weights]! A few squats, a few more bits, then down to the jacuzzi, into the pool and the steam room, and out – delighted with ourselves!
Look, maybe it’s easier in a county like Armagh which is smaller so they’re all able to go into the gym together. But I’ve seen some of their sessions and how Julie Davis [S&C head] pushes them to the limits of their physical capacity. Hugh has shown pictures of Rory Grugan in 2017 compared to Rory Grugan in 2024. Different animal. And that comes from the culture and standards that they drive.
In Killarney, we’d finish training and leave and a caretaker would come in after us and tidy up. My first night up in Armagh the players left the place spotless. It’s been the same every time. And that comes from the leadership group. They have a rota and it doesn’t matter if you’re after your worst training session of the year or been dropped for the game at the weekend or lost an Ulster final on penalties, if it’s your turn to sweep the sheds you sweep the sheds. There’s never any posts or pictures of it but when you see little things like and they’re around you all the time, it’s a special environment with a special group.
: I remember profiling McGeeney before the 2002 All Ireland semi-final against Dublin, where he was playing his club football at the time. And Na Fianna’s Mick Galvin said what separated McGeeney from everyone was his willingness to confront and challenge teammates. He wasn’t going to wait until they were retired to say they should have done this or that: he’d tell them there and then in the lifetime of their career.
: Having a challenge culture is one of his biggest things: if you respect one another and sign up to this kind of environment you have to be able to have honest conversations with each other. I remember saying to him one time that a certain player wasn’t going well. He cut me off. ‘Go tell him. Tell him what he’s not doing well, what you’d like to see him do better.’ Sometimes those conversations are difficult and sometimes players don’t want to hear them. But at least then they know and it’s up to them to do whatever they want to do with it.
In 2015, I was dropped for the final against Dublin yet all I had heard in the build-up was people saying, ‘Oh, you’re going well.’ I’d been taken off at half-time in the semi-final against Tyrone and the management must have thought, ‘We’ve got to get Donaghy going. Give him a gee-up.’ And subconsciously I was probably thinking, ‘Maybe I’m being too hard on myself. I’ll be grand.’ But I wasn’t going well. I needed someone to tell me, ‘You need to raise your f***n game or you won’t be starting the next day. Get your sleep, eat properly, get more kicking in: whatever you have to do.’ That’s what I would have wanted someone to tell me.
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: You were meant to only go up for one year but you ended up coming back for a second. And then you have that mad quarter-final against Galway.
: That was another one of those games I mentioned just before we got on the bus before the [2024] final. I said, ‘Lads, we were seven points down that day with six minutes to go. You don’t realise how hard that is to do. Even in hurling that’s hard to do. But again we kept going and kept going because we keep going and going.
‘We’ve talked about when high balls go in, can we crash? You never know what’ll happen. I always say, Be Optimistic. If it looks like it’s dropping short, crash, get in there. Be Optimistic. Nothing will happen nine times out of ten, but if you’re still in there the tenth time, something might. That day Rian skied a shot, we had six fellas flying in after it and got a goal from it.’ [Andrew] Murnin epitomises that. He’s always there. That’s how he fisted a goal against Down in the [2023] Ulster semi-final. He never gives up on a ball.
And that game against Galway was another example of us never giving up on a game. It was an incredible match. I mean, 27 points to 27…
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: The fact you scored eight penalties against Monaghan compared to just one against Galway the year before suggests you put some work into penalties. Did you?
: We did. We put work into it in 2022 as well. But you can only put so much time and energy into it as well. In Stacks, on our way to winning the county in 2021 we won a semi-final on penalties live on RTÉ but as much as we prepared for it and nailed every penalty we had, it still could have gone either way.
: The Monaghan game was much lower-scoring than the game against them in 2021, or the Galway game in 2022. Was that intentional on your part? Did you consciously alter your style of football from that more swashbuckling style you were playing in 2022?
: Well we conceded four goals against Monaghan in 2021. 2-21 to Galway in 2022. So we were involved in these shootouts but weren’t winning them. And I think [Kieran] McKeever and McGeeney looked at who was winning All Irelands and all of a sudden it became very clear. They don’t give away goals, lads. We’re playing this great football but we’re giving away goals.
What the Monaghan quarter-final showed was that we were struggling on the transitional side. It’s the one day we didn’t play well. We got dragged into a certain type of game and next thing you’re 50 minutes in, it’s nine-all and it becomes very cagey. ‘Jesus, every decision now is important.’ And we lost.
And typical Geezer, he looked at that Monaghan game in the cool light of day and said, Right, we transitioned poorly. Both up the pitch and on the way back after we’d given it away.
So then he goes away and gets Gilligan.
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: What are each of your roles? What is your role?
: Mine is working on the breaking down of packed defences. Offensive coach if you like. Deets [Gilligan] then does transition both ways. McKeever does all the defensive stuff. And putting it all together is Geezer. He really empowers us but he’s great to spot holes in what you’re doing and get you really thinking about what you’re doing.
: How do you plan a training session? Do you have to send him on in advance an outline of what you’d like covered?
: It’s mostly from talking to one another. On the phone, then before training. Training is at 7.30. The management will all meet at about 5.30. Julie will need to know what we’re looking to do and let us know how much is in the players’ legs. And we’ll sit around the table – Geezer, McKeever, Deets, myself, Dennis, Hugh – have two cups of tea, some buns and cakes – no wonder I’ve put on a stone since I’ve been up there – and we just throw stuff out. ‘I want to cover this.’ ‘Yeah, that’ll work.’ There’s a real lovely sense of collaboration. And after an hour and a half we’ll know our session.
: What did Gilligan bring?
: He brought a huge amount to our transitional play. That was a real focus of our sessions this year. And you saw that in our scoring spread with our backs coming up and scoring what they did. The poor man also happened to be our ref in training games and having to deal with the players! But they had to deal with him. You mentioned there how much more disciplined we were this year, not giving away scoreable frees. A lot of that was McKeever and a lot of it Deets keeping fellas on their toes in training games.
: During months like February and March, how did it work for you? Warriors were still playing during those months.
: It was chaotic for a while. One weekend Warriors had a game in Sligo on the Saturday. The rest of the lads all went out but I just stayed in the hotel and the following morning was driving to Carlow where we [Armagh] were playing Kildare.
But I knew our training schedule a month in advance so I’d be able to plan around it. So say we have training in Armagh at 7.30[pm] on a Thursday. I might leave Tralee at 7.30 in the morning for a meeting in Killaloe; we [PST] were doing a pitch there for Smith O’Brien’s. Then I might go from there to Clongowes College in Kildare, from there then to a meeting St Nicholas [GAA] in Drogheda where we’re doing a pitch. Sure I’m practically there [Armagh] then! I don’t feel that journey at all because I’m busy, I’m on the phone, have met my clients, stopped and had my roll and cup of tea.
: And the drive down?
: That became easy for me as well. For the first half hour I’m making voice notes about the training session so I can listen to them back before planning our next session.
From Newry then I put on a podcast. Often it’s Bill Simmons on the NBA, sometimes it’s The Football Pod with James [O’Donoghue] and Paddy Andrews. I try to get to the Applegreen near the Poitín Stil before 11 o’clock so I can get a coffee and maybe a bar of chocolate. And so by the time I’m coming through the door it’s around 1.30 [am].
: And is it to just fall into bed then? Or does it take a while to unwind?
: Hilary kills me sometimes. In April and May I’d come home and usually there’d be a NBA playoff game on. Next thing she’d wake up at 3am, I’m still not in bed and she’d panic. Runs down the stairs then and sure I’m fast asleep with an NBA game still on TV. I’d be like a demon as well worried if she was driving late at night.
But I was big about being up at 8[am] to get ready to take the kids to school, then into the office for 9[am]. I’d usually crash that evening then around 9pm. I could be trying to watch video of a match and nod off.
: Was part of what kept you going back up there was not just because you loved the group and the process but because you had the goal and belief that you could win an All Ireland?
: At the start of the year Kieran gets us these class Armagh diaries that he’s designed, probably with Hugh. The first page is what are your goals, the second is the one-percenters you’re willing to do to achieve them, the rest is review and feedback on games and sessions and all that. Anyway, at the start of the year I open it up. And I write down three goals. Win Division Two. Win Ulster. And win the All Ireland.
Probably the hardest time was getting my head around losing the Monaghan game [in 2023] and how disappointing our performance was. But then two weeks later you see them at 13-all against the Dubs with ten minutes to go and it brings home that they’re a good team as well.
So the answer to your question is yes. I felt with Kieran in charge and with how driven and detail-oriented he was that anything was possible.
: How did you process so coming up short on the second of those goals – losing the Ulster final to Donegal?
: When Kieran first called me back in 2020, I remember thinking, I’d love to be part of a team that won an Ulster championship. And I loved almost everything about that day in Clones. It’s magic. Just the town and the ground and the way the crowd is on top of you.
The lads played so well. People say we took the foot off. We missed a few shots near the end. But for the most part our shooting was outrageous. Donegal’s as well. Some of the points kicked by both teams was incredible.
: Your long-range point-taking was very good all year. Was that something you as a group went after? In your [2016] book you wrote about how as a rookie in the Irish Superleague you got a rude awakening from the veteran American Antoine Gillespie waking you up at 8am to go to the Complex to go shoot with him. Do you have that workout culture with this group? Or is it harder with the games coming so thick and fast when with Kerry you might have had four weeks between championship matches?
: It’s not tougher. If a fella has the mindset he wants to get better every day he’ll find the way and time to get better. What does it really take to go down to the field on your day off and take 40 shots, especially if someone is retrieving the ball for you? You’re done in 45 minutes, and you’ve a sense of accomplishment. So when it comes to the bigger days, you know you have it in the bag.
Before Gillespie came to Tralee, I would not have been a jump shooter. But he told me, if you want to go to college in the States, you’ve got to be able to take jump shots. The following year we were playing in a league final. Five minutes to go, tight game, I head fake, take two dribbles left, take a pull-up jump shot at the elbow and it’s all net. I had hardly scored another basket like it all year. But it was in the locker. I took it on because I had put the work in.
So when Ben Crealey and Oisín Conaty took on the shots they did in the Ulster final and All Ireland final, it wasn’t by chance. It was a drum I was hammering for the first three years and then Deets came in with a new voice to give a fresher impetus to it and did loads of work with our free-takers. Even after training I’d stay back to see who was doing the extras. And you’d see Crealey, Conaty, Turbo, Rian, Soupy, a bunch of lads there.
: It wasn’t rewarded though with an Ulster medal.
: Conleith told me the other week that after the Ulster final he couldn’t actually bring himself to go to our get-together afterwards [in Basil Sheils bar in Tassagh]. The disappointment in his stomach was too much. And I said, ‘Man, I was staying only 500 yards away [with the Fagan family who run the bar and have put him up there for the last four years] and I said to Hilary that I didn’t think I had the heart to go.’ But since I was staying that close I did go. And I got talking to Forker and he said, ‘All this pain must be for something. It must be for something greater at the end.’ And I was going, ‘Yeah, we’re close, like.’ You’re looking at your phone on your way out of Clones and everything is Donegal are great and Armagh are chokers. But again, I don’t care what you say about penalties, it was a toss of a coin who won or lost that day.
I said to Forker, ‘We’re getting better and better. We just need to get a break.’ I look back at all my wins and all my losses. And sometimes it just comes down to a bounce of a ball. In the 2023 Ulster final Brendan Rodgers comes running in and punches a ball from 20 yards out, it spins on the ground, hits the post and goes in. And even then it’s a draw at the end. Derry win on penalties and people say, ‘Derry can win the All Ireland.’ So you’re going, ‘Well, if they can win it, why can’t we win it?’ Even after those Ulster final defeats we knew in the group – and were strong on it – that we were right there with the best teams.
: You knew it for sure after the Kerry game. You’ve said it was a difficult build-up for you. How?
: [Family relative] Aidan O’Connor in the Greyhound [Bar] thought I was fighting with him. Hadn’t gone in for lunch in two weeks. I just kept my head down. Would go straight to work, and outside of picking up a coffee across the road, would go straight home.
I pictured myself when I was on the Kerry team and what I would have thought if a fella I played with and admired was coaching against us in an All Ireland semi-final. I wouldn’t have liked him for it. And I’d be thinking fellas like Paul Murphy and Paul Geaney that I played with would have been of that mindset. Even Dylan Casey at work here who captained us in Stacks to the county in 2021. I wanted to avoid him and I’d say he wanted to avoid me.
After the game then there was a thousand different things going around in my head. You don’t play for Kerry and not be conflicted about it. But there was also a part of me that was just so proud of looking at the Armagh fellas go toe to toe with a brilliant team like Kerry and finding a way to win.
Someone like Barry McCambridge. I mean, to hold David Clifford scoreless from play at one end and then score a goal at the other. He was struggling at the start of the year with a bit of an injury; he was like a lame racehorse. But he’d shown last year how he could play and when he got his chance against Westmeath he just took off. To me he has to be Footballer of the Year. Paul Conroy was brilliant as well but in terms of being a two-way player, McCambridge is off the charts. To tie down and outscore the likes of Shane McGuigan, Shane Walsh, Diarmuid Murtagh, Clifford in that semi-final? Phenomenal.
: Did you meet Jack after? Or Micheal [Quirke]?
: I didn’t really want to be going down there [the line].
: In case it would be all about you?
: Yeah. I met Joe O’Connor and Dylan [two Stacks team-mates] obviously and Tony Brosnan who was a fella I really admired for what he gave to that Tralee college team when he was trying to break onto the Kerry panel. In fairness the two lads [Jack and Quirke] texted me later in the week. But even after the game I kept myself away from it all [the congratulations and attention]. The following week I stayed up in Armagh with the family.
You had an All Ireland final to prepare for. And then you stayed up there a few more days after you won it. Why do you think you won it?
: Well, a lot of it has to come down to Kieran. When you look at the bank of work he did over the past 10 years it’s incredible.
When he went in there with Paul [Grimley] in 2014 the culture was all over the place. You had people dropping off the panel or not wanting to come onto it, not wanting to play for the county. Even in his first few years there was a lot of that still going on. But you don’t have that now. Fellas want to say on. Fellas are kept on.
Mark Shields has been an incredible servant for Armagh. Been there since even before Kieran came back. The last couple of years he’s suffered a couple of horrific injuries. Another manager would have looked at it: He’s 33, way down the pecking order. Is he going to come back? But Kieran isn’t thinking like that. He’s thinking, ‘This guy is going to get the best medical care possible. That’s the way we look after our people. We’re going to look after Mark the same way we would if Rian O’Neill was injured.’ And then Mark is back and he’s training and he’s back involved in AvB games, pushing lads. He’s down in Croke Park in the warm-up room, having words of encouragement to lads.
The B team lads were incredible. Fellas like Mark and Jemar Hall and Cian McConville. Because sometimes we’ve asked them to play like opposition players which in turn might affect their own game and chances of playing on the 26. You see lads on other counties dropping off panels, not happy with their game time or role. But the culture Kieran has created is 'We Before Me'. And the lads have bought into it. We might go to a Jemar before a training game, ‘Look, We’re asking you to play this lad we’re coming up against next week. I know you might want to go up here and kick your scores but it’s actually more important for the group at this point if you do this role here to get X ready for next Sunday.’ It’s all about We Before Me.
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Contrary to some speculation, Donaghy hasn’t decided yet if he’ll be part of that 'We' in 2025. PST have won a massive four-year contract with the Football Foundation, the body that caters for the grassroots of English football and is funded by a combination of the FA, Premier League, UK Sport and the government. Only one other company in the UK installs more pitches over there and no one more over here. So work is good and work is busy, just like things are at home.
For now it’s just about enjoying and savouring what they did.
“I’ve often said to Julie, ‘I would have cracked you up, trying to get me in the gym.’ And to Geezer, ‘I’d have cracked you up trying to get me to keep a journal and write goals!’ “But he said, ‘Ah, but when you were on the pitch you always did what was best for the team. I need these fellas to play more for each other and the team.’
“And when I watched videos of them before I went up, there was a lot of shelling going on alright. Fellas shooting from bad angles. Taking bad options. Me Shots is what I call them. We had to get rid of the Me Shots. Now it’s at a stage where fellas owe up in advance. ‘My bad. That was a Me Shot.’ So that kind of awareness and team-first mentality was a big thing he brought me up for.”
Well that, luck and a whole lot more.