No pulling the wool over McBrearty’s eyes and another classic Donegal anthem

They’ve already started to paint the sheep and there’s another anthem to follow in the footsteps of ‘Jimmy’s winning matches’. Yes, we think it’s safe to say All-Ireland fever has officially gripped Donegal.

No pulling the wool over Paddy McBrearty’s eyes

There are many telling signs of when a county is officially caught up in the hype created by the exploits of their footballers or hurlers, but when they start painting animals in the county colours you know there’s no going back.

When a county gets caught up in All-Ireland fever, it is normally the trigger for a county manager to usher his players into hiding until the day of the big game, but one of the most refreshing aspects of the current Donegal team is their apparent willingness to enjoy the ride en route to their first All-Ireland final in 20 years.

As such, young Paddy McBrearty, the lamb in the current Donegal flock, had no qualms about being photographed alongside a sheep painted green and gold on DonegalDaily.com earlier this week in an article entitled ‘Nobody will pull the wool over Donegal star Paddy’s eyes’.

Pic via DonegalDaily.com

Like any self-respecting member of the fourth estate, the author of the article has taken the opportunity to shoehorn as many sheep-related puns into the piece, with ‘sheepish’, ‘pull the wool over Paddy’s eyes’ and ‘Ewe must be kidding’ all making their way into a piece containing just 83 words in total.

Make of the effort what you will by reading it in full here, but we reckon it’s not baaaaad at all. Sorry.

'Jimmy’s Winning Matches' has a little competition

Without delving too deep into the subject, we think that Wexford’s 1996 anthem ‘Dancing at the Crossroads’ is the only GAA anthem worth remembering in the last 20 years. Honourable mention must go to the G-G-G-Galway song that featured on a TV ad a few years ago, but it’s not exactly something that is suited to being sung en masse by a group of delirious GAA supporters.

As such, the release of the now famous ‘Jimmy’s winning matches’ song by Rory Gallagher (formerly of the Revs) and a delightfully chippy colleague of his in Lanzarote was a very welcome development, as it was on a level far beyond most of the awful excuses for music that come out of the woodwork around All-Ireland Final time every year.

Now, it turns out that Donegal have yet another excellent GAA song to add to the collection. Introducing ten year-old Danny O’Donnell – his first name obviously an attempt to disassociate himself from his more famous namesake – who can be seen and heard singing ‘Sam Maguire, What’s that coming back to the Hills... Sam Maguire’ in the video below.

We don’t know much about Danny apart from the fact that he’s from Annagry, he’s got a hell of a voice on him and he’s well able to play a guitar that looks, on first glance anyway, to be easily as big as Danny himself, but after this video spreads around in the next few weeks, we could well be hearing from him again in the future.

Yep, Donegal’s got All-Ireland fever alright; they’ve got it baaaaaad. Again, sorry.

Hat-tip to Liam Doherty for his help with this one.