Hi °C | Lo °C
BRIAN McEniff still recalls the vital move he made during the historic 1992 All-Ireland victory that still stokes the county's great football passion.
Dublin had just scored to cut his side's lead back to three and he looked around for Naul McCole, who was not only a selector, but also county chairman at the time.
Spotting him in the dug-out, the Donegal manager, who'd won their first All Star as a player/manager in 1972, leapt down into it and said: "Naul, I'm about to spend £300 now!"
He knew that any managerial pitch encroachment would pick up such a fine, but he decided it was now or never.
As it transpired, he actually spent double that, but McEniff still regards it "as the best £600 the Donegal County Board ever spent!"
"I remembered having this conversation with Martin McDermott, the Roscommon manager, about a year previous, when he told me about watching his side losing the initiative to Meath in the All- Ireland semi-final.
QUICKLY
"He said the game was gone from them before he could stop it, so I decided I had to take action quickly."
McEniff went in initially to have a word with his midfield captain Anthony Molloy.
"I kinda half abused him, but like myself as a player, Anthony was the kind of player who could take a bit of abuse," he recalls, laughing.
"Their half-backs were getting on top and starting to push our half-forwards back up the pitch, so I felt we needed to stop that.
"I continued on across the pitch, but then I went back in to have a chat with Declan Bonner.
" Tommy Carr was after coming out of corner-back, which didn't really suit him, but I wanted Declan to take him back in there, so in I went again."
On the head of such pins does sporting history dance and no one begrudged Donegal when they danced long and hard after '92.
Twenty years later those details are easiest to recall, not the joyful mayhem that followed.
Donegal's day of destiny against a Dublin side who'd beaten them in that year's league quarter-finals, started inauspiciously.
McEniff, still a successful hotelier today with broad sporting interests, was friendly with Fran Fields of the FAI and Finn Harps fame.
Finnstown House in Lucan was the popular bolt-hole then for Irish soccer and rugby and Fields recommended it to McEniff as Donegal's pre-match sanctuary.
On the dew-covered lawn that Sunday morning, Martin Shovlin, Donegal's inspirational wing-back, who'd taken a knock to his shoulder that week, failed a fitness test.
"I don't think I've ever coached a player who loved his county jersey as much as 'Shov'," McEniff recalls.
"He would put his head in where others wouldn't put their feet, so it was terrible for him but he knew himself he wasn't able for the game he'd want to play."
John Joe Doherty, a corner-back, was McEniff's choice to replace him.
"I could have put John Joe in the corner and brought (Noel) Hegarty to wing-back, but I had once seen John Joe giving an absolute exhibition at centre-back on a very wet night in Glenties and felt he'd be up to the job."
When Dublin got a soft penalty after just nine minutes things looked grim, but Charlie Redmond blasted it across the goalmouth.
Donegal's half-forward line of the McHugh brothers and Joyce McMullan did a huge job on Dublin's vaunted half-back line that day and they led by 0-10 to 0-7 at half-time.
With Manus Boyle unstoppable at full-forward and Martin Gavigan unbreachable at centre-back Donegal ultimately gave the team performance of their lives and, after going six points clear, won in the end on a 0-18 to 0-14 scoreline.
McEniff had one other terrible Hobson's Choice that day.
SUFFERING
One of the players' brothers was suffering from cancer at the time and half an hour before throw-in the Donegal manager was mistakenly informed that he had passed away.
The information proved to be false, but that was only confirmed after the match by his sister, who, in those pre-mobile days, had to find a public phone to discover the truth.
McEniff made the unenviable decision not to tell the player beforehand, on the basis that his brother would have wanted him to play.
But, in the immediate aftermath of the game, confusion and sadness reigned until the happy news arrived and Donegal could give free rein to their joy.
"Of course people want to drag up '92 again now, but this is all about this great team of young guns now and what Jim McGuinness has done with them," McEniff says.
"He has really proven himself and I'm expecting to see 'Sam' in Bundoran again at 12.0 next Tuesday!"
