BENEATH his thoughtful, erudite profile on social media lurks a different Eamon McGee.
“Ask any referee in Donegal,” he says, “and they’ll say ‘McGee’s an awful prick.’
Ask some of his team-mates and they’d probably reach the same conclusion. The veteran Gweedore defender has become a “bit crabid” in his old age.
“One of the younger lads said to me that I was probably one of the biggest pricks at the club, and that’s from shouting and getting crabid at boys,” McGee says. “‘Why are you not there? Why are you not here?’ It’s something from a coaching point of view I’ll have to brush up on, because you’re chasing perfection but you realise it doesn’t exist.
“As long as people are doing their best, mistakes are going to happen. But I’ve still got that competitive edge.”
Picture the scene: McGee’s having a masterful game in the Ulster final against Scotstown in Healy Park at the beginning of December. He hasn’t coughed up one possession.
It’s the 61st minute. The two teams are tied. One slip and the game could be gone for either Gweedore or Scotstown.
McGee gets the ball and does what he hasn’t done all afternoon. He gives it away. Darren Hughes is eating up the ground now.
“One of the lads gave me the ball and as soon as I gave it away I knew there was danger,” he recalls.
“My immediate reaction was: ‘Take the black card’, but I thought if I scrambled back I could get it.
“And then I was thinking: ‘I’ll be the man who cost my club an Ulster final. This is what you’re going to be remembered for…’
“These were all the thoughts in my head.”
Hughes off-loads the ball and because of the heavy conditions Scotstown’s attack breaks down. McGee breathes the biggest sigh of relief.
“Whatever way it hit the muck it just skidded on. It was the Any Given Sunday speech – inches, literally inches. And that’s how I got out of jail.”
Like he says, mistakes are going to happen. But it doesn’t make him any less contrary on the training field. He’s thrown more than one tantrum this season.
McGee decided to become part of ‘Mervinho’s’ [Mervyn O’Donnell] backroom team last season. But it wrecked his head.
“I don’t know how people do the player/manager role. You can’t make good decisions and play your own game.”
So he stepped away from the role to become a regular foot soldier in Gweedore’s quest for county and provincial honours this season and Brendan Boyle stepped into the breach.
“By doing that I was handing over a lot of the say,” McGee muses.
“So, when things weren’t going the way I wanted them to go, I threw a tantrum. ‘Boyler’, who’s a good mate of mine, probably seen a side of me that he’s never seen before.
“That old, immature Eamon would have come back. We can laugh about it now. There were a few nights at training where I would still see Boyler as my mate – it was hard for me to see him as the coach – and there were times I was telling him to ‘shut the f**k up’ and he’d be telling me to ‘shut the f**k up’.”
Through all the tantrums, McGee knows how lucky is as he prepares for Gweedore's All-Ireland Club semi-final showdown with Corofin in Carrick-on-Shannon on Saturday.
He acknowledges he could easily have been among the Gweedore crowd for last December’s Ulster final.
Facing a fork in the road around 2010/2011, McGee credits former Donegal manager Jim McGuinness for helping him choose the right path.
“I don’t think I could ever under-estimate what Jim McGuinness did for me. He didn’t just change my football outlook – he changed my life. Not by what he did but the path he set me off on.
“It’s not he blesses you with a Padre Pio medal. I probably wouldn’t even have played club football because of the path I was going down. Football had become not as important to me.
“I couldn’t drink a lot at the time but it was the effect it had on me. It was a dangerous path I was on. The cops were starting to get to know me, and not for my football. There was a lot of hassle. I would have been a supporter watching Gweedore [winning the Ulster Club].”
The last train was leaving the station when McGuinness called to his house.
“I was lucky. I nearly missed it. It was a combination of McGuinness having good time for me but it wasn’t enough that he had good time for you. He met me in the house and he said: ‘You need to do this and you need to do that…’ and he didn’t want anybody or anything to jeopardise the project.
“I knew he also needed a corner-back. The likes of ‘Maxi’ [Curran] and Rory Gallagher would have put pressure on, saying: ‘Listen, he’s absolutely flying for Gweedore and we’d need a good reason not to pick him.’
“That played a part too. So it wasn’t necessarily he’d good time for me, there was a pragmatic reason. He needed a full-back or a corner-back.”
McGee now lives in Letterkenny where he works as a data analyst for a US health insurance company.
“You don’t know how life would have turned out,” he wistfully adds. “We’ve twins [Evie and Luca] now, we’ve Daisy, I’ve Joanne and we’ve a nice house…”
The things that matter.
***IN a glowing tribute carried in The Sunday Times, Eamon McGee expressed his shock and sadness at the tragic loss of four young people following a car accident in Gweedore at the end of last month, one of whom was Gweedore footballer Michael Roarty.
“I was always keeping an eye out for ‘Roycee’, trying to give him advice,” McGee said. “I loved the wee bugger…We don’t have to win this cup (for him). But if we play in that game and giving our all, we can say to the family forget for five minutes – maybe not even five minutes – but if they can do that, that will be a wild lift to them.”
