The 32-year-old who will be a notable absentee from the Donegal team when they contest Sunday’s NFL Division 1 final
The surgeon gave it to Paddy McBrearty straight after the fourth operation on his left knee in a decade last October. Time to consider retirement.
So it’s tempting to feel sorry for the 32-year-old who will be a notable absentee from the Donegal team when they contest Sunday’s NFL Division 1 final.
Then again, he almost walked away himself anyway at the end of Donegal’s horror 2023 season, when the future looked particularly grey and bleak. Donegal were relegated from Division 1 that season, were beaten by Down in Ulster and tanked by Tyrone in the All-Ireland series.
That he got two more Ulster titles out of it before retiring, captaining Donegal both seasons, means McBrearty actually did pretty well for himself.
It was his persistence that ultimately got Jim McGuinness to return to the Donegal hotseat for 2024.
And if he hadn’t gone to the lengths he did, calling to his former manager’s door uninvited the morning after Donegal’s 2023 Championship exit, these glory days probably wouldn’t have returned.
McBrearty was captain in 2023 and said: “It was a difficult period, standards had slipped big time. I suppose the position I was in, I took it really, really to heart.
“You learned a lot that year. You knew who was in it for the right reasons and who was only in it for the good days. That’s when you know the really, really good lads.
“Personally, if Jim wasn’t going to come back in at the end of the 2023 season, I probably would have thought about retiring then.
“Because I was coming off a really serious hamstring injury, my business was starting at that stage and I wanted to give that a proper rattle. I wasn’t going to stay on for a rebuild.
“I was glad to get two more years out of it. I had 13 years done at that stage in 2023.”
And yet the surgeon’s words were still hard to hear last October, after the operation in Santry. The rest of the Donegal team were in Cancun at the time, their reward for reaching the All-Ireland final.
The 32-year-old GAA+ pundit for 2026 said: “It was my fourth surgery on the left knee. I partially tore my cruciate back in 2015 and completely ruptured the cruciate badly in 2018. I came back and got a few years out of it.
“At the end of 2024, I had to go in and get a cartilage repair, meniscus repair. Halfway through the season last year, it was just wear and tear basically, but I didn’t want to know the nature of the injury until after the season.
“I got a scan, bit of damage, got the meniscus cleaned again, got the cartilage cleaned up again. The surgeon then came out and said, ‘Listen, there’s extensive damage there. You need to have a few thoughts about the future. What do you want life to look like at 40?’
“That’s what his exact words were, ‘What would you like your Tuesdays and Thursdays to look like?’
“I said I would like if I was fit to be able to play a bit of astroturf. He said, ‘Well, these are the things you need to consider then’. I took his words on board, got a second opinion, same kind of diagnosis.
“I don’t think I would have contributed a lot this year, to be honest, by the time I got back and was up to the pace of it.”
In only slightly different circumstances, McBrearty could have ended his career with a Hallmark moment – by captaining Donegal to All-Ireland final success against Kerry last July.
He said: “We didn’t get a lot wrong on the day. Obviously I would say there’s a few things that would be changed. We lost the game by 10 points but there was 10 minutes to go and we were only a few points down. I remember I missed a shot into the Canal End.
“I’ve thought about it a lot since, it was a shot that I should have nailed.”
Those are the regrets that beaten All-Ireland finalists have to live with. Even winning Sunday’s Division 1 decider at the expense of Kerry wouldn’t bring any great closure for them, although it would be a statement of summer intent.
McBrearty said: “We had a really good year last year but there was a lot of hurt there as well and a lot of the team would have carried that through the winter. It’ll be interesting to see how they get on on Sunday. I’d say Donegal will want to lay down a marker.”

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