JAMES Guinness was the last person most people expected to take the field on Sunday.
Carryduff’s county forward underwent an emergency appendicectomy before their quarter-final win over Ballyholland a fortnight ago, and was not expected to play any part in their Down SFC semi-final against Burren.
However, when Storm Amy intervened to force a game scheduled for Friday evening back to Sunday afternoon, it gave Guinness an unexpected shot – though there was still some surprise when the familiar figure wearing number 29 crossed the white line with six minutes left at Páirc Esler.
“He only said last night at about half 10 that he was fit to be a sub, and we weren’t necessarily going to use him,” smiled boss Finnian Moriarty after watching his side seal their place in the final.
“But once we got the cushion of four or five points there, we sort of thought it would maybe be a good time for him to come in because the game was getting very stretched.”
And the 29-year-old was delighted to be able to come on and help Carryduff get across the line, setting up a shot at reigning county kingpins Kilcoo on October 19 – a repeat of the 2020 Covid decider, Carryduff’s first senior final appearance, which the Magpies won.
“I thought it would be tight for a final, if we got there, and then I went down and did a wee bit with the physio on Friday, then got moving and was like ‘there’s probably a chance here’.
“I did a fitness test yesterday, and it was like, ‘look, if push comes to shove, which it obviously was going to against them, just stick me in’.
“I had the appendix removed, it wasn’t a major open surgery or anything… I suppose the only thing was not picking up any other niggles because when you haven’t been running and training, you’re not feeling your sharpest after two weeks sitting doing nothing.
“On Friday night we met up and did a wee bit of handling, then a good bit of prep in the gym just to see how the body was moving, and then did the same again yesterday… I hadn’t even done anything bar 10, 15 minutes cycling before that.
“On Friday when I had my bag packed for work and then going there [to Newry], I had no boots with me, I didn’t pack anything. But, look, the boys didn’t need me out there today, it was just seeing it over the line at the very end.”
Although it was comfortable at the close, Carryduff got off to a rocky start after falling six points behind with six minutes gone.
However, it is a measure of how the side has grown during recent years that they kept cool heads to force their way back into the game, eventually taking control – putting up a score of 0-20 with no two-pointers and 10 different scorers.
“I think a lot of teams, when you get hit for 1-3, that’s a hard thing to come back from. They’re playing with the wind, big favourites too with the bookies.
“There’s always going to be that wee thing, they beat us last year, Odhran [Murdock] is one of the top players in the country, never mind Down, you’re trying to contain that. And the resilience then, we didn’t panic, whereas maybe last year that let us down.
“To be fair, we’re very well prepared now, we’ve put serious hours in - I know everybody does - but I’d say this year we’ve probably matured; our training’s more mature in terms of, when you’re a younger team, it’s all gung-ho.
“This is not that young a team any more, bar big Tom [McCarroll] there… it’s not that it’s now or never, but at some stage you can’t just be the team that could do something - you have to start delivering.
“We still haven’t done anything, we still haven’t won anything. We’ve been here before and didn’t get over the line then.”
Guinness missed that final five years ago due to injury but, despite being sidelined for much of the past fortnight, should be good to go when the ball is thrown in against Marty Corey’s men.
And he hopes some of the near misses in the time between can stand to Carryduff when the pair renew their rivalry once more – with 37-year-old former Fermanagh midfielder Eoin Donnelly, immense against Burren, a huge addition in recent years.
“We’ve lost a couple of close games, but you have to learn from those experiences.
“Kilcoo have shown they don’t always win pretty, but they win. We know ourselves that even if it’s not a 10 out of 10 performance, like that first half there, we didn’t play for the first 15 minutes, that doesn’t always matter as long as you can get over the line.
“We know that’s what it’s going to take. There’s a lot of us in here who have no experience of that [a county final], but you have the likes of Eoin Donnelly... he’s ageless, he had to be on form today because he’s playing against the best player in Down, the best player potentially in that Ulster 15.
“He was given the job, and he was incredible. He looks after himself unbelievably well, he’s in serious nick, and he’s still got the legs for it. Even in the quarter-final, in the last minute, he was running hard. He’s a great man to have about.
“That’s a wee bit different for us than maybe other clubs where you get the likes of Eoin and Cian Clinton but everybody has their own identity, and that’s part of ours.”
