A comprehensive win over Tyrone last week led to a swelling of anticipation levels in the county; a stern test against a Kildare team who are steadily improving under Kieran McGeeney’s tutelage would be an excellent indicator as to where this Donegal team is really at.
For the first time in 2011 (and hopefully the last) I didn’t actually go to the match. A long standing pre-planned trip brought me to Edinburgh to watch the oval ball game as Ireland took on Scotland in the Six Nations Championship.
While it was disappointing not to be in suite in O’Donnell Park, the sight and sound of 60,000 souls at Murrayfield singing as one made the trip worthwhile; a rousing rendition of ‘Flower of Scotland’ making the hairs on the back of everyone’s neck stand to attention. Great stuff.
So it was left down to modern-day communications to keep up to date on the latest scores from Letterkenny – and there weren’t many! A 0-3 apiece score-line at half time in an inter-county game is pretty poor stuff and not what you expect from two teams in decent form. For a while I thought the correct updates were getting lost in transit across the North Channel of the Irish Sea but this was not the case. My sources turned out to be spot on; it was in fact the players on the pitch who were off-colour.
Things didn’t get much better after the restart; it took another twenty minutes for each of the sides to get a point; with fifteen minutes to go it was 0-4 each. Having not been in attendance I cannot make this comment with conviction but the fact that the man in the middle was none other than Sligo’s Marty Duffy, it wasn’t a major surprise to hear of a scrappy affair. He awarded thirty-six frees in the opening half, that’s a free a minute, and he wouldn’t be known for the 'letting the game go' at the best of times.
Donegal eventually did spring to life, just as their ancestral cousins were doing in Edinburgh. Four points without reply, Michael Murphy again the tormentor-in-chief, looked to have sealed the win for Jim McGuinness’ charges but two late concessions gave the Lilywhites a point and a goal and a share of the spoils.
Scotland, meanwhile, didn’t manage to get to level terms even though they probably deserved it. Ireland’s concession of penalties provided the Caledonians with the ammunition they needed to make a charge back into the game and they had their own Michael Murphy in the form of Chris Patterson to minimise the gap between the sides. Substitute Dan Parks also chipped in with a drop goal late on. The Scots, however, didn’t have a Mick Foley to level it the death.
Back to GAA matters and it was obviously a huge disappointment to lose a game from a commanding position with such little time left on the clock. Beating a Tyrone team on the slide from the pinnacles they’ve reached in recent years and drawing with a Kildare team going in the opposite direction isn’t to be sniffed at though. Donegal are on the right track and are still well in the hunt for promotion. A trip to Navan in a couple of weeks should give us a clearer indication of whether or not a Division Two title is a realistic target. The bookies don’t seem to think it is, pricing us at 11/2 to lift the trophy.
All of a sudden the talk is of Laois, who won their opening two games with wins against Meath and Antrim. Their annihilation of Derry on Saturday night however has really made people sit up and take note. Going to Celtic Park and coming away with anything is good going so to win by fourteen points is a staggering result and a huge endorsement for the work that Justin McNulty has been doing since taking over.
It was well flagged from the beginning of the season that Division Two was going be an ultra competitive one, and with two points separating the six teams from 2nd to 7th it is certainly working out that way. So 11/2 looks a pretty healthy set of odds to me!
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