Granted, there have been previous Ireland squad members who like to play a few tunes in their downtime.
If McGuinness, who has cousins in the music industry and has graduated from playing piano to the guitar, gets a spare minute this week, he might ask John O’Shea about the time Andy Reid paid the penalty for presiding over a singsong when an unimpressed Giovanni Trapattoni was in charge.
But there’s more strings to the bow. The point stands open to correction, but there’s every chance that the strapping centre-half is the first Irish international with an intimate knowledge of the workings of the English lawn bowls community.
It’s in the family, you see. McGuinness qualifies for Ireland through his father, John, who was born in Derry but emigrated to England where he developed a love of the bowling green that was passed down to his sons.
John represented England in the 2014 Commonwealth Games, winning a silver medal for his efforts. His son Tom, Mark’s older brother, is also in international duty this week at a tournament in Hong Kong.
“Obviously it’s a relatively low key unpublished sport,” says McGuinness, who also bowls when he can.
“But it’s been a big part of my family, a completely different sport to football as you can imagine but they play at a high level.
“The fundamentals of being a high level athlete is pretty much the same (to football), there’s a lot of dedication that goes into it. Fair play to them. They’ve been in a fortunate position to play for their country as well
“I’m proud of them both. It’s a nice sport to be a part of, actually, a nice community. It’s not on TV too much, but it’s fun to play and harder than you think.”
McGuinness recognised the importance of hobbies away from the game when football became a little bit harder for him.
He joined the Arsenal academy as a 10-year-old and was part of a very talented age group that came up through the ranks together.
Bukayo Saka was the pick, but Emile Smith-Rowe was another talent in his generation and Reece Nelson and Eddie Nketiah were in the next age up.
There’s a high volume still active at a good level of football, including McGuinness who is settling into life at Luton following a summer move from Cardiff for a reported fee of around £10m.
It’s been a tricky start for the Hatters, with a 5-1 weekend drubbing at Middlesbrough reflecting that they’ve found it different back down in the second tier.
McGuinness tries not to take the disappointments home with him; the challenge of falling just short at Arsenal tested his character and made him realise that he’d find a better place professionally if he found other things to occupy his mind.
“When you talk about relaxing and getting my mind off football, music is probably the biggest part of that for me,” he explains.
“I love it as a down-time just to play along and chill really. I think it’s the most important thing to have some sort of a release.
“Football is very demanding, it’s very full-on. It can be tough, there are ups and downs but to have something to go home to and relax and switch off is probably the most important thing for any player.
“I was too much of a perfectionist and so focussed on the football that it was actually unhealthy in terms of getting injured and trying to get back too quickly or trying to focus on that too much and it didn’t help actually,” he continued, with a nod back to setbacks that struck at a bad time with Arsenal.
“So I found having another thing to focus on – whether it was music, or family, or friends or some sort of activity – really helped me to switch-off and really helped on the pitch actually.”
After coming through the Irish ranks at U-19 and U-21 level, a first senior call last month was short lived because of a knock sustained preparing for the win in Finland.
Heimir Hallgrimsson extended another invitation this month. This time around, he might just get the rub of the green.