Final nerves are way worse as a dad than as a player

MARTIN MCHUGH EXCLUSIVE

- GARRY DOYLE

MARTIN MCHUGH has had a connection to each All-Ireland final appearance by Donegal. A winner as a player in 1992, he watched as sons Mark (2012) and Ryan (2014) played in the biggest game in the Gaelic football calendar.

Tomorrow, Ryan will take to the field against Kerry again hoping to reverse that result. During All-Ireland final week GARRY DOYLE caught up with MARTIN MCHUGH.

PART ONE: IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER

Once Donegal's 1992 All-Ireland semifinal ended, the players came back home and the fans came back to Earth.

Suddenly everyday concerns mixed with an even bigger worry: where would they source a ticket?

For Jim and Kathleen McHugh, they had an answer to that second problem but not the first.

With two sons on the Donegal team, they had options: Upper Stand or Lower? Hogan or Cusack?

But going to Croke Park left another issue unsolved. Who would milk the cows on their farm?

It's unlikely if any of Dublin's players were troubled by this kind of issue but if you are from a rural background, youd understand the scale of the predicament.

Ordinarily, a neighbour would help out. Except this time just about everyone in Kilcar wanted to migrate to Dublin for the day.

"The GAA has been going since 1884," says Martin McHugh, Donegal's talisman on their first All-Ireland winning side. "And there we were, 108 years later, reaching our first All-Ireland. To say it was a big deal is an understatement. It was huge."

All the more so because no one gave them a chance.

"A funny thing happened on the day of our All-Ireland semifinal," McHugh says.

"Our performance was so bad that the rumour was the Dublin players left before the final whistle.

"Who knows if that is true or not but it fed into the narrative that they were raging hot favourites and we were just there to make up the numbers."