Guinness time - how Down star battled back to form and fitness after injury nightmare

DANIEL Guinness knew the texts would start flying once Down and Antrim had safely secured passage towards the business end of the Tailteann Cup.

He is in the fifth year of a senior career in red and black, having previously earned his stripes at U21 level. Growing up, being packed into the car and heading to games, it was only ever Down – even though he has never actually lived in the county.

“Nope,” he says with a rueful smile, “unfortunately it is true…”

Living on the Antrim side of the south Belfast divide, Guinness and older brother James – who has also featured for Down in the past – played for St Brigid’s until U12 before following in their father’s footsteps by donning the distinctive yellow and purple of Carryduff five miles up the Saintfield Road.

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Brendan Guinness soldiered alongside the likes of Down All-Ireland winners Neil Collins, Greg Blaney, John Kelly and Mark McCartan during the late 1980s and early ’90s. Despite not having a place to call their own – a nomadic existence seeing home games held at The Dub, Hannahstown, Cherryvale, even as far away as Killyleagh – a talented Carryduff side still proved a match for most.

With impressive facilities and huge numbers across the board, the current club is barely recognisable from bygone days. But the connection forged back then ultimately brought two top talents to Carryduff’s door, a hat-trick of U21 titles providing the backbone of a side seen as perennial challengers for the Frank O’Hare Cup.

“I think my dad always kind of had it in his head that we’d go to Carryduff eventually,” said the 24-year-old dentist.

“We always went to Down games when we were younger, even when we were at St Brigid’s, it was always Down gear, Down tops...

“Carryduff actually played St Brigid’s twice in the Creggan U21 tournament - it was always a spicy few weeks before them. We won both of them to be fair, so I was happy enough.

“But the lads were still joking that, if Antrim had beaten Meath, who would I play for in the Tailteann final? Saying I’d have to go to Croke Park on the Antrim bus…”

Colm O’Rourke’s men got the better of the Saffrons in the end, and Brendan Guinness would well remember the buzz that surrounded Down’s last meeting with the Royals in an All-Ireland final 32 years ago.

Sam Maguire is not at stake this time around but, after years with little or nothing to shout about, colour has returned to the county since Laois were so ruthlessly dispatched in the last four.

Daniel Guinness has been a key cog in the wheel that brought them here, his ball-carrying ability from deep a recurring feature as the Mournemen picked up momentum after final group game defeat to Meath.

Yet there was a time when he wasn’t sure what the future might hold.

Guinness played no part in Down’s Dr McKenna Cup or National League campaigns, those crucial months when the building blocks of Conor Laverty’s masterplan were being put into place.

Instead, the first action he saw under the new regime came when stakes were at their highest – Ulster Championship, Donegal coming to Newry, 10,000 in Pairc Esler anticipating an upset against beleaguered opponents bitten by a winter of discontent.

And they got one - but more of that later.

Because striding out beneath the late April sun to pick up Tir Chonaill's Ciaran Thompson marked the end of a frustrating 12 months that brought Guinness’s body to the brink.

“I had been having groin problems since 2021. Between playing with Queen’s and Down at the end of that year, I tore the groin tendons off the bone on both sides. I gave it two weeks, tried to play in a Sigerson game, but it didn’t work because we got put out.

“Then last year I missed a few National League games, got a load of scans, an injection, I played a half against Roscommon, a half against Offaly and then didn’t play again until the Championship game with Monaghan.

“I was available, but I wasn’t fit…”

After Down’s Tailteann Cup exit to Cavan, matters were compounded when Guinness suffered stress fractures in his back playing for Carryduff.

A powerful athlete with a build more akin to a rugby centre than a typical Gaelic footballer, the nature of those injuries curtailed the explosivity at the heart of his game.

Scans of his groins told him he was on borrowed time but, with the county championship on the horizon, the plan was to give whatever he could before getting sorted once and for all.

“It was sore getting dressed in the morning, sore going up and down stairs, you couldn’t really function normally. I was trying to nurse through it.

“It was literally don’t train Monday to Wednesday, then put the boots on the odd Friday, try and play a couple of league games, a couple of championship games.

“I just couldn’t play against Glenn, then we played Mayobridge [in the Down SFC quarter-final] a couple of weeks later but I couldn’t move… I couldn’t run, couldn’t kick, couldn’t sprint.

“I was just standing at full-forward.”

Having known since April 2022 that an operation was the likely long-term solution, finding someone to take it on threw up another obstacle.

“I went to see a couple of sports doctors and they were like ‘yeah, I don’t know where to go there’. I couldn’t get anyone here. At that stage you do wonder whether anyone will be able to do it…”

That was when physio Shea McAleer pointed Guinness in the direction of Professor Ernest Schilders, who specialises in groin injuries as well as hip and shoulder arthroscopy.

Premier League soccer stars have also placed their trust in Prof Schilders to get their careers back on track so, heading to London for surgery on January 15, Guinness knew he was in the best possible hands.

“I went over to see him, he did a few tests, a few more scans and said he could fix it, which was good enough for me.

“So I got both sides done - double groin repair, double hernia repair and they had to take out four nerves, basically denervate the area. From there, he said I was looking at somewhere between 12 and 16 weeks post-op before I’d be back playing.”

Despite that timeframe, it was a case of treading carefully, sometimes holding back to ensure everything was being done by the book. Nothing could be left to chance.

Yet watching while the Down panel was put through its paces by the new management during a gruelling winter schedule, ahead of a spring push for promotion, Guinness had to fight off frustration and keep his eyes focused on the long game.

“Professor Schilders told me I need to look after it because if it goes again, or you mess up the rehab from this, it’s hard to come back from. That was always in my mind.

“Sometimes you thought you were taking a couple of steps forward, then there would be a few steps back. Lav would’ve put a big emphasis on work being done pre-season - especially in his first year, you want to see what the boys are like, see what the character of the group is.

“So he ran them hard, you’re watching all those sessions thinking ‘I have to catch up on this’. Every session they do, they’re getting further ahead...

“We were looking at promotion for a good bit of the League, the thought does creep in every now and again ‘is there a chance you could try and get back in for some of those later League games?’ It wasn’t to be.

“But the aim was always Donegal. It was even a bit of a race against time for that.”

Guinness returned to training a fortnight before that April 23 showdown – too late to be in contention for the final League outing in Offaly, it was a bit of a no-man’s land as the big one edged ever closer.

Having barely been able to kick a ball for the past year, it was suddenly sink or swim. But Laverty kept the faith, and Guinness repaid it with an all-action performance as the Mournemen claimed Donegal’s scalp.

“You’re always wary - wondering can I still kick it? Every time you kick it you’re sort of waiting for the pain to kick in, but it was fine.

“That day there was a big crowd, a real warm day, and it’s one of those where if you’ve done the pre-season, played all the League, you go in like ‘I’m in a good place here’. For me, it was slightly going into the unknown – an acid test of where I was really. You don’t really want that acid test on Championship day, ideally! But that’s how it fell.

“As soon as you start the warm-up, get a good blow-out there, you’re ready to rock. Any uncertainty is gone. We targeted that game from the start of the year… it was one of the biggest wins in my time with Down.”

And, even though things didn’t go to plan against Armagh in the Ulster semi-final, getting the better of Donegal provided another shaft of light, emboldening a mood of cautious optimism in the county, as well as the growing sense of togetherness in the panel.

Twelve months earlier Down had seen several key men drop off the panel once their Ulster interest was concluded. The story could not have been more different heading towards this year’s Tailteann Cup campaign, with Laverty’s influence integral.

“I didn’t know him at all,” says Guinness.

“Obviously I’ve played against him a few times, James would probably know him better from Trinity [where Laverty is a GAA development officer]. He would have talked about him, then you’d hear other wee snippets.

“The Kilcoo boys don’t say very much but whatever you do get off them it was ‘Lav this, Lav that’…once you buy into it, he really values commitment. From the start of the year, he wanted to build a close-knit group and this is probably as close a group as we’ve ever been a part of.

“A lot of the boys get on well, would’ve played on the same Down U21 and U20 teams and been around the senior set-up through the last few years – we’re all around the same age, you’re together three or four times a week.

“It’s as close to a club set-up as you’re going to get with a county.”

From a personal perspective, despite those difficult days endured, the body has answered his call.

Indeed, team-mate Danny Magill jokes that, even though leg day has been largely off limits in recent months, the Carryduff man’s thighs remain twice the size of his.

“I’ve been banned from doing legs by physios,” smiles Guinness, “it’s all summer pumps at this stage.”

And with the big day closing in, excitement is building - the reward for Down’s persistence and refusal to entertain ideas above their station, and a precious shot at guaranteeing the county’s place in next year’s All-Ireland Championship.

Early wins over Waterford and Tipperary may have done little to whet the appetite, before defeat to Meath - on a day when the Mournemen were left to rue an inexplicable 17 wides – proved an unexpected fork in the road.

Bouncing back from a below-par first half to see off Longford led to a coming-of-age performance in Cavan, before Laois were laid to waste to see Down installed as favourites going into the final.

Now they have a cause, and a record to set straight against the Royals.

“We nearly did everything we could to lose that game – you can’t expect to kick 17 wides and win a game of football. We didn’t really follow the game-plan that was set out for us.

“Sometimes when a team gets the better of you, you have to wait four or five years to get another crack at them, so to get another go five weeks later, in a final, that’s something to look forward to.

“Obviously this is not where we wanted to be at the start of the year – I’m not saying that like we’re too good for the Tailteann Cup, you can see by the way we’ve approached it that hasn’t been the case. We’ve taken it as seriously as you could.”

After a trying time, Daniel Guinness is delighted to be there – and Down know how lucky they are to have him.