LIKE the Little Red Hen, Jimmy doesn’t need any help. But unlike the Little Red Hen, he doesn’t ask for it. I watched them training once in 2011, shortly before their All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin and was amazed that, apart from the goalies, he took the entire session himself. The drills, the running, the talks during the breaks. His was the only voice. Driving away from St Eunan’s, I marvelled at the absolute self confidence of the man. Ten days later, from the throw-in, when the entire Donegal team retreated into their own half, no one had a clue what was happening. The Dublin players, bemused, soloed towards them unmarked, walking, toe-tapping on the spot, hand-passing the ball around and getting nowhere. But when they tried to penetrate inside the 45, they were swarmed, like the man who gets too close to the wasp nest. By half time, the score was Donegal 0-4 , Dublin 0-2 and the world GAA community was in the middle of an existential crisis.

Michael Lyster: I tried to leave just now but the doors are locked.

Pat: Michael, I don’t know what to say. Heaven help us Michael (shakes head sadly). I’ve seen the apocalypse. There are people who go to the Hague for war crimes. This is a crime against Gaelic football.

Michael: The horror. The horror.

Joe: It is the road to nothingness. I can envisage a time in the not too distant future where a team won’t score at all in a big game in Croke Park. This is totally unnatural. It is the antidote to Gaelic football. The nightmare is not just upon Dublin, but upon us all.

Colm: The crowd has become completely frustrated. They were booing throughout that first half. This is the game from hell. But I don’t think Jimmy will give a damn about that.

How right Colm was. Donegal had a single goal chance to win it in the second half but did not take it. Eventually, amidst the boos and the shock, Dublin won by 0-8 to 0-6, managing only two points from play. At the final whistle, Jimmy was glowing. When he told the media that “The game came too soon for us, we need to tweak a few things,” they giggled. Vincent Hogan wrote that Jimmy was “a leader of sheep”. The general view was that that was the end of this Frankenstein experiment.

The general view was not Jimmy’s view. If his confidence was absolute in 2011, where is it now? Last year, he secretly prepared a game plan to ambush Derry. Do not forget that coming into that first round, at home, we were National League champions, having beaten Dublin in a thrilling final and very hot favourites. But James McGuinness had noticed a flaw. He had noticed that Derry’s entire defence including the goalie were pushing up into the opposition half. So, he prepared a counter-attacking game plan that involved going over the top of Derry’s defence and shooting for goals as soon as they were in range. Four goals later, the Donegal bus drove out of Celtic Park, leaving the ruins of a once promising Derry team behind them. No one had seen it coming. Apart from Jimmy.

This year’s league sums up his audacity. His total self assurance. His fixation on the main prize. In their first three games, they dispatched the last three All-Ireland champions with maximum efficiency: Dublin at home (by three), Armagh at home (by seven) and Kerry away (by two). Then, worried that he might end up in the league final (a week before playing us in the championship), he sent out half a team against Galway (leaving his main players at home) and lost.

This is because he needed only eight points to stay in Division One and wanted to beat Derry in the following game, just to stay in our heads. Which is precisely what they did. After that, with eight points, he had zero interest in the league. He put out the B team against Tyrone (who else would do that?) and when they moved efficiently onto Tyrone’s shoulder with ten minutes to go, I swear they eased off. I can imagine him telling them in the week before the game, “We want to perform to our best, but we do not want to win. Give it a good 55 minutes lads and we will be back at it on Monday night in Ballybofey.”

Last week against Mayo, the game was proceeding as expected, Donegal’s B team trailing by a few but not threatening to win it. Then, a penalty. As the ball was handed to Dáire Ó Baoill, I texted a Mayo friend. “I wonder how he will miss this. Drive it wide? Pass to the goalie?” Dáire went for the latter, an embarrassing slow pass straight to Colm Reape. The danger was averted. Dáire looked relieved. Mayo were delighted, as it put them in a league final. That’s the difference between Jimmy and Kevin McStay. As Owen Mulligan is fond of saying, “leagues are for playing, championships are for winning.”

Jimmy’s sole aim is to win the All-Ireland. Unlike, say Mickey Harte, his ego does not demand constant adulation. Mickey wanted to win the McKenna Cup every year, which he did (14 times), both with Tyrone and then Derry. He wanted to win the league, even though it is incompatible with championship success. Mickey needs that, because the team is merely there to serve his ends. Jimmy on the other hand is fascinated with the chase, with the players, with the game. For him, short-term satisfaction is not satisfaction at all. For Jimmy, the McKenna Cup is for the McKenna family. With Jimmy, there are no distractions.

So, in a few weeks time, they will arrive in Ballybofey refreshed and meticulously prepared. They will beat Derry and they will efficiently move towards their true goal. I suspect that if you somehow managed to get past the security in Ballybofey, their rehearsals will have been for Dublin, Galway and Kerry, six times a week since the beginning of the year.

They will not be league champions, but as Colm said all those years ago in the RTÉ box, “Jimmy won’t give a damn about that.”