Battle of old pals Padraic Joyce and Jim McGuinness on a knife-edge

Four years after Jim McGuinness put the Galway players through their paces in a secretly filmed training session in Tuam, his Donegal team are all that stand in the way of the Westerners' bid for a second All-Ireland final appearance in three years.

In the midst of the pandemic, the slightly grainy footage set tongues wagging that McGuinness was about to make a dramatic return to the inter-county scene with Galway, though it turned out to be a once-off.

Both parties clearly got something out of the exercise. Galway players got a bracing insight into the "intensity" with which the Donegal manager ran his training drills and McGuinness learned that high walls are an indispensable part of any inter-county operation.

McGuinness and Padráic Joyce had been old team-mates on a star-studded IT Tralee team that ran amok in the Sigerson Cup for a couple of years in the late 90s.

The pair might have clashed in the 1998 All-Ireland semi-final - a few months after their second Sigerson victory - but for Joe Brolly's injury-time goal in a dour Ulster final.

By the time the counties did meet in the 2003 All-Ireland quarter-final, the late John O'Mahony's great Galway side were already on the decline and a youthful Donegal team - with Brian McEniff once again back at the helm in the absence of any other takers - triumphed in a replay in Castlebar en route to an unlikely All-Ireland semi-final appearance. There was surprise all around at the outcome. Donegal full-forward John Haran told Donegal Live recently that "I think the Galway boys could be a bit cocky back then and wouldn't be long looking down on you."

That campaign proved a false dawn for Donegal and neither team made much dent on the championship in the late 2000s, save for Galway's