Championship! The most revered word in this great sport of ours; the word that gets the adrenalin going, the tingle in the spine and the mind racing. Tae and ham sangiches, sun shining and dreams of Croke Park.
That’s what its supposed to be like anyway; Donegal is generally regarded as a different world to the rest of Ireland and we certainly got this year’s championship off to a different start than many would have anticipated.
Raining since early morning, bit of a breeze, poor football, lots of mistakes - that’s what we were treated to at MacCumhaill Park today. However it still was a treat, a first win in the Ulster Championship since 2007 and regardless of the forensic examinations that will take place in tomorrow’s press of how bad Donegal are and how negatively we play, we got what we came for - a win.
The ‘purists’ wont have enjoyed today at all, and you cant blame them; it was dire stuff. Setting off at midday for Ballybofey that was what I expected with the rain coming down as it was. The minor match gave us an insight of what was to come - poor handling, misplaced passes, greasy ball all leading to a bad game and the senior followed suit. The tactics employed by Donegal obviously also contributed but this was simply a game that we had to win. It was a potential banana skin, as we found out in 2009, and there was a sense of that amongst the players. They just desperately wanted to get today over with, get the win and move on.
Today isn’t a game to be analysed too much. Donegal will play much better and anyone who has seen them this year, especially against Tyrone, Derry and Meath, will know that this is a very talented bunch of players who can score heavily, defend well and beat most teams.
The national media will over-react and read too much into this display. If they had bothered to watch Donegal in the games above rather than focusing on Dublin, Cork and Kerry for the vast majority of their coverage they would know what we’re made of.
In a way it is encouraging to be able to win a game in a comfortable fashion without having our two marquee forwards firing. Michael Murphy was played around the middle for most of the game with Colm McFadden inside. They got their usual few scores but it was lads like Mark McHugh and Ryan Bradley who caught the eye most. The full back line was solid and Karl Lacey and Kevin Cassidy did well driving from the half back line. Martin McElhinney put in a great shift at midfield and even with Neil Gallagher approaching full match sharpness, the Creeslough man is a certain starter at present.
Antrim are playing the victim quite well post-match, claiming the home side’s tactics forced them into pulling men back behind the ball - in truth they were never really in the game and looked a poor outfit.
They’ve a long wait until they are in qualifier action and its hard to see them making much headway through the back door.
One man who will be delighted with negative football making all the headlines is Martin Sludden. Today marked his return to championship officiating and he made a largely un-noticed return manning the line.
A new star made his senior bow today and while he didn’t have the best of days at the office it was still great to see seventeen year old Patrick McBrearty coming on for his senior debut after earlier playing in the minor game, which the visitors won. He has been earmarked as one for the future for a while now but his progress onto the senior stage has been quite remarkable. We’ll be seeing more of him this Summer.
So next stop is Breffni Park in four weeks; the place doesn’t hold good memories for The Messiah, Michael Murphy et al but we are likely to see a much different Donegal to the one we saw today. Hopefully the weather will be better - a dry ball and hard ground will suit our running game much better and we should be able to hit the higher gears that weren’t needed today. The boys have plenty to work on over the next few weeks but they’ll be happy knowing that expectations are firmly in check after today’s display and they can go out and show everyone what they’re made of against Cavan.
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