Donegal might have ended a five-year wait to reclaim the Ulster football title via a penalty shootout but Ryan McHugh would prefer other means of deciding epic battles like the one they had with Armagh in Clones on Sunday.
It was the second year in a row that the Anglo-Celt Cup was handed out after the tension of a shootout and while Jim McGuinness' Donegal were able to bask in the sense of relief and joy at the final whistle, McHugh feels the lottery of penalties is harsh on the losing team, which was the Orchard County, also for the second year in a row.
The 30-year-old has been a key part of McGuinness' second coming with the Tír Chonaill men and, speaking after earning the PwC GAA/GPA Footballer of the Month award for April, McHugh said he is an advocate of final replays, if feasible within the increasingly condensed inter-county calendar.
"But I think if you can't separate [the teams], especially in a final, an Ulster final or an All-Ireland final - and I know the All-Ireland does go to a replay - there has to be a way that we can fit in a replay.
"The two teams, to be fair, give absolutely everything and you couldn't separate us after 90 minutes. I think both teams would have deserved a replay.
"But it's easy for me to say that. I'm not sitting down with the GAA master fixtures [plan], and trying to fit in weeks here and there. I can understand the headaches that come with that.
"Listen, it was a phenomenal way for us to win it. It's unbelievable being on the winning side of penalties but I can feel for Armagh because I've been on the losing side."
Victory was a bit of a habit for the county during the first 'Jimmy's Winning Matches' era and the way this year is going has a similar vibe already, now that McGuinness is back orchestrating things for Donegal again. After Sunday, he has lost just once in 17 Ulster SFC games in the hot seat.
They have split the approach this year into three separate campaigns and already two of those can be ticked off as successes. They have Division 2 league title and now the Ulster crown in their back pockets, before they tackle an All-Ireland campaign that has them grouped with Cork, Clare and old rivals Tyrone.
Even though McHugh feels Donegal "did not come become a bad team overnight" during a disappointing 2023 - one he was not a part of due to work commitments - certainly they will go into the hunt for the 2024 Sam Maguire in far better shape than last year when Down ended their Ulster campaign in the last eight and Tyrone saw them off by eight points in the All-Ireland preliminary quarter-finals.
McHugh always had every intention of returning to the Donegal fold after his stint away and once McGuinness came back, they met briefly early on before stalls were set out.
"I met Jim myself, I don't even know what date it was," he said. "I got married at the end of the year so I had to meet him to tell him that and I was going to need a week or two off around that time,"
"I met him in Letterkenny to go through those sorts of things and obviously had a wee chat about the year ahead.
"But when we (the panel) all got together then around the start of December, we all got together as a group and set out the stall for the year ahead."
'Jim is the exact same from the first night you meet him as he is the night before an All-Ireland final'
While ten years have passed between McGuinness' spells in charge, with globe-trotting adventures within the world of soccer in between, McHugh feels his manager remains largely the same today as he was at the time of his departure - after the 2014 All-Ireland final defeat to Kerry - and that his man-management and consistency of standards keep setting him apart.
"Every single night of training he's on it and I know that sounds easy but, having coached a few teams myself at underage and seeing other managers and the way they work, it's not easy to be on it every single night.
"You can have bad days in work, you can have fallouts with family, with girlfriends, partners and stuff like that. He's fit to separate that from the sport.
"I've been fortunate enough to be involved in a team that got to an All-Ireland final and I can tell you Jim is the exact same from the first night you meet him as he is the night before an All-Ireland final.
"He brings it every single night and it's the pride he has in his county and for his county that he's fit to bring it every single night.
"To be fair to the boys, everything he's asked of us we've given and they're putting in a huge, huge effort for the people of Donegal. Thankfully we reaped the rewards last Sunday."
Longer-term, dabbling in coaching at underage has given McHugh an ambition to target and we may well see him on the other side of the white lines in the distant future, even if for the moment the focus is fully on the playing side.
"It's great to get to see the other side of things and to be working with the players. Definitely I've plans, whenever that happens, to go into coaching," he said.
"You've to prove yourself so you do, but you definitely see a different aspect when you're standing on the line watching games.
"Do you think about that in the middle of a game? No, I'd just be thinking of the game plan that has been set out and how to implement that to the best of your ability. But it's definitely something that I plan on doing, is coaching."
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