Jim arriving in Pettigo from Dublin after bringing Sam home in September. Will he be back this year? Joe Brolly thinks so
TV pundit and Derry legend Joe Brolly says Donegal are still the team to beat in the Championship this year.
The Dungiven man was speaking as he launched a charity golf tournament aimed at raising awareness of organ donation and make the practice an ‘opt-out’ process here in Ireland.
He says he has spoken to Jim McGuinness and asked the Donegal manager about winning back-to-back All-Irelands.
“I asked Jim this at the weekend, how do you deal with this sort of orthodox belief that has grown up that you can’t put All-Irelands back-to-back in football any more? How do you deal with that psychologically with the squad?” said Joe.
“And he says: ‘Well, you don’t deal with it at all, we’re just preparing for the Tyrone game. Nobody has ever mentioned winning a second All-Ireland, you can’t project into the future, so all our concentration is on Tyrone’.
“And when he tells you it, you believe it. He’s immensely charismatic, an unbelievably interesting fella, and that’s going to be very important this year.”
He also said that whoever wins in Ballybofey later this month will win the Ulster title.
He added: “Those two teams are the two teams in Ulster that can control the tempo of a game, control what happens in a game. There’s no other Ulster team that’s able to do that. So I think they’re in a totally different plane than any of the other teams, and any talk of Monaghan or Derry is fanciful.”
Brolly is a patron of Opt For Life, one of the main charities to benefit from the annual GAA golf challenge, set for Waterford Castle Golf Club this September.
“The thing about the Opt For Life is it makes perfect sense. In the future you wouldn’t need to have a donor card. Some 95 per cent of people think that organ donation is a great thing but only 25% have a donor card so in future we wouldn’t need a donor card. We’d all start off as donors,” he added.