Jesus Christ, Ryan McHugh is only 22 years of age.
It’s hard to imagine Donegal without their ninja-like assassin now. You think back and it’s damn tough to remember a day when the men from the hills didn’t have their lethal, cold-blooded sniper sliding through the long grass undetected for them.
Yet, here he is, readying for just his fourth season with his county senior team and he’s already a veteran. He’s an All-Star, he’s Donegal Player of the Year, he’s unstoppable.
A few men are reinventing this game as if they have no time to wait and a Kilcar gem is at the forefront of that movement.
Every sport goes off in its own tangents and follows different trends and crazes.
In the last two decades alone, Gaelic Football has championed marathon runners, then immovable beasts and now dynamic powerhouses. Gradually, people are realising that, in a 15-man team on a 140-metre pitch, there might be room for a little diversity.
And through all these fads and different training techniques, in all the squats we’ve done instead of kick passing and for all the conditioning coaches spending time analysing how you plant your ankle when you have two 90-minute sessions a week, there has been one constant: the best footballers are still the prized asset.
Being fit is vital. Being fast is a massive advantage. Being strong bloody well helps. But you’d trade any of it in a heartbeat to do what the best can do with a size five at their laces.
Ryan McHugh is never going to be the biggest, most imposing footballer. He’s never going to be the tallest. But he could one day be the best.
He’s got skill, he’s got brains and he’s got balls and a combination of those three would create the finest footballer in any era of this game for the next seven centuries.
When he was breaking through, he was this livewire attacker that could spread any defender on toast for a bit of craic on a random Sunday. He’s since developed into the most effective and most prolific sweeper in the country and it’s not like he wasn’t recognised for what he was doing on the field. He was, however, starved of the success he really wanted.
“You don’t set out at the start of the year to win All-Stars or to win Donegal Player of the Year or to win whatever else it is, you set out to win the Ulster championship and to win All-Irelands,” McHugh told Donegal Sport Hub at the start of December.
“You set out to win the All-Ireland. We didn’t do that.
“Growing up, all I wanted to do was play football. Ever since I was a young lad, all I wanted to do was win an All-Ireland with Donegal. I haven’t been fortunate enough to do that so far but that’s all I want to do, win an All-Ireland with Donegal.”
That’s all he wants to do, that’s all he cares about and, with over a decade left to do it in his own career, he has plenty of time.
But McHugh doesn’t strike you as a man with time on his side. Everything he does, he does it with this breathtaking urgency. When he speaks about football, he speaks about what he hasn’t won and what he wants to achieve and how he can do more and how he can do all that quicker. When he plays football, he scales the length of the field like a flash of light cutting through and bending around bodies like there’s not a millisecond to waste.
Donegal turn over the ball, McHugh takes off. Donegal lose the ball, McHugh takes off.
Through all the lung-busting grit though, there’s a touch of real quality, pure class. When he lines up a defender, you sit up in nervous anticipation wondering which arse cheek the poor man is going to be left on first. When he feeds the ball through his hands and cuts straight for the posts with respect only for his own county, he does it with this uncompromising majesty.
McHugh is a seriously well-trained athlete now. He has power and he has unrelenting energy but he’ll never rely on that. For players like him, it’s about his technical brilliance and his mental resolve.
Three points he kicked against Tyrone – three unbelievable points – in the Ulster final when his team needed him. Three points he kicked against Cork at Croke Park when his team needed him. Dublin were hit by another goal from McHugh, an electrifying habit of his now against the capital and, all the while, his squad of experienced, distinguished footballers are looking up to the wee man.
In the process, so too is the rest of the country.
Kids are in awe of what McHugh can do and how he can produce moments of magic even when his stomach must be churning with the work he’s gone through.
He’s the role model that people needed and he’s one of the reasons Gaelic Football is changing again.
By the end of 2017, the name Ryan McHugh will be on every lip all over the island and, just like everyone wanted their own Kieran Donaghy and their own Brian Dooher and their own Tony McEntee, everyone will want their own Ryan McHugh.
All they’ll have to do is find their best player. All they’ll have to do is let him play.
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