By John Harrington

Donegal’s victory over Dublin in the 2014 All-Ireland SFC semi-final remains a red-letter day in the modern history of the game.

Viewed in isolation, it was the greatest tactical triumph of Jim McGuinness’ time in charge of that Donegal team as well as a hugely absorbing and entertaining between two heavyweight teams.

It was a devastating defeat for Dublin on the day, but hindsight has taught us that it was also a hugely valuable one in the long-run because they haven’t lost a championship match since.

Lessons were learned, and the foundation stones for their historic five-in-a-row were salvaged from the rubble of that defeat to Donegal.

At the time it felt nothing short of a seismic shock because Dublin were the reigning All-Ireland champions and had won their five matches on the way to that showdown with Donegal by an average of 14 points.

The Ulster team were 10-1 outsiders, but Jim McGuinness was a man with a plan.

Even before his team had beaten Armagh in the All-Ireland Quarter-Final, he was already plotting Dublin’s downfall.

“I wasn’t fully sure we were even going to meet them because we had a quarter-final and whatever else to play,” write McGuinness in his autobiography, Until Victory Always.

“But I knew that if we hoped to beat them, we needed to plan for it well in advance. They had owned every team they met over the summer and they appeared to be getting stronger with every game.

“Normally, you would like to have three weeks to prepare for a team but I knew in my heart it wouldn’t be enough for Dublin. I spent all my spare hours – between working and preparing for the quarter-final – watching recordings of Dublin games.

“I was studying as deeply as possible. It meant that once we reached the All-Ireland semi-final and the boys began to turn their thoughts to Dublin I could say to them: I know what Dublin are about. I know what they are going to do and how they are going to do it and that’s all you need to know.”

It looked as though those extra days of preparation would be all for naught and maybe even a distraction for much of the All-Ireland quarter-final against Armagh.

Donegal struggled for long periods of the match against their fellow Ulster team, but in the end just about found a way to win by a single point to set up the showdown with the Dubs.

And, as far as McGuinness was concerned, stumbling into the semi-final was an ideal preparation for staging an ambush.

“We were back in a semi-final and we all felt as if we had managed to do so while flying blind,” said McGunness. “Nobody noticed. And it meant we won without revealing anything of where we were at.

“So now I could take out the folder on Dublin for real. It wasn’t that I had been taking the earlier games for granted. The truth is that I was hedging my bets because of the enormity of the challenge that Dublin presented to all teams.

“On the bus on the way home after the Armagh game, all I said about Dublin was: “I know what they are about. I know what they are going to do and how they are going to do it and that’s all you need to know.”

“We sat them down on Tuesday night and went through it all. Then we coached it. So it was an instant switch. I was talking with conviction and they knew it.

“Our theory was this: we are going to beat Dublin because they are going to give us a chance to. If we follow our plan to the letter, not only can we beat them – we can destroy them. And I believed that 100 per cent.”

McGuinness spent hours poring over videos of Dublin in action to try pin-point weaknesses and build his own team’s game-plan around exploiting them.

Dublin’s kick-out strategy was analysed to the nth degree and huge work also went into refining Donegal’s own in the three weeks before the match.

The decision was made to push high up on Dublin’s kick-out, and pack the Donegal half of the field with bodies for their own.

A high premium was put on tracking Dublin’s support runners and ensuring any ball kicked towards the Dublin full-back line was angled into space rather than directly at Donegal’s inside forwards.

Hours were spent working on working the ball out from their own half of the field while under pressure and avoiding contact in the first and middle thirds of the team.

After three weeks of relentless strategizing and conditioned training, McGuinness was convinced his team were primed to do a number on Dublin.

“We spent five days in Johnstown House at a camp and watched so much film that we came to know their patterns off by heart,” said McGuinness.

“We could talk through the move: ball is won, James McCarthy takes it at speed, lays it off, and the ball goes inside to Bernard Brogan.

“Nobody is watching McCarthy, who continues his run at three-quarter pace and then bombs through once he sees that Brogan has clocked him. Another slip pass. Point. By the time we left the camp, we were confident we knew their game well.

“We used the final week to burn the game-plan into their minds. By the end, they were sick of listening to me. They were finishing my sentences for me and cutting across me.

“They knew it. They had it off. They were getting cranky at hearing the same thing over and over. That made me feel good because then I knew we were prepared.

“At our last meeting, I wrote Donegal 3-16 Dublin 0-12 on the blackboard. That was the final score we were banking on. It actually ended 3-14 to 0-17. It wasn’t too far off the mark because Dublin did kick unbelievable points in the first five minutes of the game.”

It looked like all of McGuinness’ well-laid plans were going to be blown to smithereens when Dublin started the All-Ireland semi-final at 100mph.

After 25 minutes they led by 0-9 to 0-4, and the only reason that Donegal weren’t already sunk was because Dublin had missed two clear goal chances.

And because they survived that initial onslaught, the self-belief of the Donegal players was never shattered.

“We went in with the intention of protecting the D because Dublin had obliterated teams with goals early on and we were very conscious about keeping the goals out early on,” Donegal midfielder on the day, Rory Kavanagh, told GAA.ie

“That is what you have to do against Dublin teams, to try to take them down the stretch. We had worked a lot on video analysis of them and the way they pushed up on kickouts, the way they went man to man on opposition kickouts, and the fact we would feel they would be vulnerable off long kickouts if we could win breaking ball. They commit so many numbers up the field and that is the way it panned out.

“Initially you are talking about the start they got, but crucially they didn't get a goal even though they had a couple of chances. Connolly had a chance, Bernard Brogan had a chance, if one of them goes in it is a very different game. The fact we kept the goals out it was a huge boost for us and we nicked one ourselves towards half-time and we actually went in a point up.

“All of a sudden Dublin were maybe doubting themselves, it played into our hands beautifully because they pushed up even harder in the second half to try to squeeze the life out of us which left huge holes at the back. We knew from looking at them that they would leave big gaps back there.”

A 26th minute point by Ryan McHugh heralded a change of momentum in the match and goall from the same player after 33 minutes helped Donegal into a 1-8 to 0-10 half-time lead despite Dublin’s total dominance for the first 25 minutes.

McHugh struck for a second goal at the start of the second-half and now Donegal had Dublin exactly where they wanted them – chasing the game and growing increasingly desperate.

“I remember seeing Neil Gallagher watching Ryan and moving to his left before reaching for the ball and setting him in motion,” wrote McGuinness in his autobiography. “Neil had become a vital figure in our game-plan.

“He was a leader and a towering old-fashioned midfielder with a deep game intelligence. Neil reads a game so well. So much flowed through him and he was the conduit for the attacks we created in the second half.

“In some ways, it was unreal to watch because Dublin are a phenomenal football team. Their goalkeeper is probably the best in the history of the game. Their half forward line is the best I’ve ever seen.

“The only glitch in their system was the one we took them down on. So as unbelievable as it was, it also felt inevitable. It had to happen. And once the Dublin players lost their sense of certainty, they became as fallible and vulnerable as any other team.

“Sometimes you can play in front of 80,000 people and it can feel no different from Ballybofey. The only time I was aware of the atmosphere was close to the end.

“We could see all the Donegal supporters beginning to wave and make noise. We couldn’t figure what was going on and then we spotted it. They were waving goodbye to the Dublin fans leaving the Hill.”

The efficacy of the Donegal game-plan was best exemplified in the third goal they scored.

The Dublin half-backs were sucked into the opposition half for a Paul Durcan kick-out because they followed the Donegal half-forwards.

Durcan went long with his kick which was flicked on in the air by Michael Murphy to the supporting Neil Gallagher who galloped into a prairie of space left by the absent Dublin half-backs.

Gallagher passed to Odhran MacNiallais who then passed across the face of Stephen Cluxton’s goal to Colm McFadden who finished coolly.

There was still 25 minutes to play but no way back for Dublin. Their attacking forays grew increasingly forced and frantic which allowed the Donegal defence to smother them more easily and turn the ball over time and again.

In the end it was a deeply satisfying win for Donegal and a caustic experience for Dublin.

But they put it to good use. Former Dublin defensive coach, Declan Darcy, recently told Dublin GAA’s, ‘The Hop Ball’, how he and everyone else in the set-up used it to fuel their fire for years to come.

"3-14 was the score we conceded that day,” said Darcy. “I put 3-14 on the inside of my locker, 3-14 on my laptop, 3-14 on my printer. Everyday I woke up, it was on my locker. It grounded me. I knew when I had to go to work, I knew what was at stake. It definitely gave me huge motivation.

"We had MacBooks, we'd be showing players clips. I had it on my laptop, 3-14. Everything we were doing, 'This is why. We don't want to go back'. I was defensive coach, so to concede 3-14 hurt me a bit harder than most.

"Paul Flynn said, 'Why do you have 3-14 written on your computer, Dec?' I says, 'That's the f**king score Donegal got against us. That's what motivates me. I hope it motivates you'.

"It grounded the group. I firmly believe that we wouldn't have been as successful as we were because it gave us that edge of thought, that deep down thought that at any given day, this can be taken away from you.”

Dublin were exposed tactically in that 2014 All-Ireland semi-final against Donegal, but it never happened again.

Jim Gavin and his coaching team tweaked their tactics, adopted a more patient brand of football, and in the end perfected a system of play that consistently shredded blanket defences for the next five years.

"There were lots of learnings for us and how the game evolves: Our half-forward line, the selection of the team was all front-loaded with players that wanted to score; Did we get the balance right in selections?”, said Darcy of that 2014 defeat to Donegal.

"We were very hard on ourselves. There was no blaming the players, whatsoever. You'd often look in the mirror before you'd start giving out about others.

"It was a big challenge but it was hugely motivational, especially with the team we were playing and the manager (Jim McGuinness) involved. It gave me huge energy for the following season to put it right if we got the opportunity.

"It was all about trying to take the emotion out of it and going after the logical thinking which was, 'OK, how do we do this better? What if this was presented again to us?' That stage was the height of the blanket defence coming out to stall teams like ourselves that were playing 15 on 15.

"This was an opposition that had really good footballers in their group. In fairness to Donegal, they had top, top players; sometimes that's not acknowledged.

"It wasn't about technical ability. Since you were a kid, you were taught to play football 15 on 15. All of a sudden, this system that's alien to you is put in front of you. You have to think and understand why they are doing it and try to dissect and start picking holes in it.

"The one thing that I love, and Jason Sherlock has a huge part in that, it was quite easy to play against that system in the end. It was a challenge in the beginning. It became easy in the end; if teams set up that way, we were happy with it. That was nice to see that curve."