![\"Injury](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/XI5BUJVKNJCB5GP6W4JER5P5HY.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"GAA](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2H4AWPBQDBF3NEJX4PSF2GZATY.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nDespite having been good all year and excellent in the semi-final win over Meath, he was taken out of the starting team in place of Caolan McGonagle, who was in to play as what Jim McGuinness described as the \u201csecond sweeper\u201d role.<\/p>\n
By the time he was introduced at the interval, so much of the damage had been done.<\/p>\n
McFadden talks about \u201cthe initial mourning of it\u2026I don\u2019t know if you ever get over it. I think Michael [Murphy] gave that answer one day.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says that the team haven\u2019t watched the final back as a group, but that he sat through it himself across several sittings with his father Hughie over the winter.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just kind of trust your management team that they\u2019ve came away and watched it and they\u2019ve come back from the learnings that they want us to take from it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI watched it back personally – it makes for raw viewing.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t get through it all in one sitting either, if that makes sense. <\/p>\n
\u201cA few awkward conversations across the sofa with your father when you\u2019re trying to watch it! That\u2019s kind of the grieving process of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why watch it?<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say to answer a few questions,\u201d replies the Killybegs man.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou play a game and you have thoughts of what happened and sometimes you watch back a game and you get a different perspective, not necessarily a better perspective. <\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes you\u2019re chatting to a teammate or somebody after a game and you\u2019re saying X, Y and Z went well in the heat of battle, an emotional view. <\/p>\n
\u201cThen you watch it back that\u2019s not exactly the way it went – you probably get a second take on it if that makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
The more you study that final, the smaller the margin between the performances of the two teams becomes.<\/p>\n
But the scoreline never changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were comprehensively beaten in the All-Ireland final – I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any way of dressing that up. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s definitely things that were unfortunate on the day. We lost two very good players [Ciaran Thompson and Ryan McHugh]. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe know now looking back that Paddy was obviously carrying bumps and bruises going into the game as well – a fully fit Paddy McBrearty puts that ball over the bar and it definitely narrows the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just have to learn from it as a group of players that we didn\u2019t show up and put our best foot forward in the All-Ireland final. That poses a lot of hard questions personally and then as a group as to why it didn\u2019t work out.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just have to improve from that. I know that sounds very simplistic but you just have to go away and see what were our shortcomings and how we can improve from that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think we\u2019ve made some strides but the acid test is only starting now and everybody\u2019s very well aware of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is speaking at the Ulster Championship launch the day after Donegal landed a slap back on Kerry with a big victory in the Division One league final.<\/p>\n
The Achilles bothered him a bit through the club season with Killybegs. He went and got it right.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing out of the club Championship, it is just trying to plan your body as soon as possible to get a clear run at pre-season. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s two things that didn\u2019t happen for me in the last two years – there\u2019s been one or two niggles that interrupted that pre-season training. I\u2019m a player that has to get all the training done.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need to get base of work before Christmas to hit the ground running. I didn\u2019t do much training before Christmas in 2024 and a wee bit in 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n
At this stage of his career, what does heavy conditioning look like? Is it on-field or off-feet?<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe throughout the club season I would probably do more off-feet conditioning because of the struggle to train between club games if you\u2019re not fit to actually get on the park.<\/p>\n
\u201cIdeally you\u2019re doing as much on the grass as possible because there\u2019s nothing as good as getting into legs. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou come up with all these fancy plans and just being able to take part in football training every night it\u2019s on, you know that might not seem like a big thing, but when you\u2019re in and out, or you\u2019re kind of going to the physio \u2018can I do all this tonight or can I not do all this?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you just get into the routine of not thinking about going to training and you\u2019re just going to football training, you don\u2019t realise, that\u2019s kind of a privilege to be able to do until you\u2019re not able to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
McFadden has played every minute of Donegal\u2019s eight league games this year.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s up on 13 years now since he caught the eye rampaging through the place at full-forward as the club reached a county final.<\/p>\n
His father Hughie had done goals for Killybegs in their 1988 championship success but was more aligned to soccer during his playing days, a path that young Hugh looked on course to follow until Jim McGuinness called him in at the end of that 2013 campaign.<\/p>\n
Hughie senior coached him up through the grades and one skillset that he has brought to the Donegal team, whether it be from the soccer background, is his communication.<\/p>\n
From the terraces, it is very often McFadden you will hear running the game on the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were very lucky growing up with a few great coaches. It helps too when you\u2019re probably opinionated and you\u2019re not afraid to shout out a few instructions. <\/p>\n
\u201cJust trying to help your team as best as possible and if you think you\u2019re seeing something that can help someone else, why wouldn\u2019t you do it? <\/p>\n
\u201cBut then I\u2019ve said plenty of things on the field too and you get it wrong, and you get a wee bit of rap in an ear that you said something and you made the wrong call too. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s part of it. I\u2019d a lot of good coaches encouraging you when you\u2019re younger. My father managed all the teams growing up too and it\u2019s one of the things that rubs off.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HUGH McFadden has compared the aftermath of last year\u2019s All-Ireland final to a \u201cgrieving process\u201d. Until such a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6342,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-412577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-donegal-gaa","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}