BY RYAN FERRY
CLOUGHANEELY endured a tough 2025 but bainisteoir Michael Lynch is hopeful that he will have a stronger hand to select from this term.
It was a challenging campaign last year with a number of key players struck down with ACL injuries.
The Pairc Naomh Fionnan men finished in the lower half of Division 2 and then lost five games in the Intermediate Championship before staying up after beating Na Rossa in the Relegation Play-Off Final.
Club stalwart Michael Lynch is back at the helm for another season and hopes to have a stronger panel in 2026.
“We will hopefully have a few more bodies than we had last year.
“We have a couple of boys back from injury and a few still on the way back.
“Ethan Friel played against Ardara in the Gaeltacht and Caolan McNulty just got the all clear last week. Tomas Ó Raghallaigh and Ciaran Coll will hopefully be back for the middle of the league.
“They have been working hard to get back.
“Blake (McGarvey) didn’t play any last year and John Fitzgerald missed most of league as well but he’s back with a full pre-season behind him.
“We think we will be stronger. There’s a good group of five or six minors that have come through as well.
“So we think we will be stronger on the manpower front.”
Teenagers in their first year of adult football were left manning central positions last term against seasoned campaigners but those young guns should be better for the experience.
“You have to let them at it,” said Lynch, who has John Paul Gallagher, Blaine Mulligan and James McCrossan helping him this season.
“The only way they will get experience is by playing.
“You would like to bed them in around more experienced fellas and see if they can work their way around things.
“Last year they were in at the deep end and they just had to go for things but hopefully that will stand to them.”
Cloughaneely were well on their way to Glencolmcille last Saturday when the match with Naomh Columba was called off.
That was frustrating for the players but the team did get a win in their opener as they defeated Downings by 1-17 to 0-16.
“That was a good win and we played well on the night.
“With 15 minutes to go we were five points down and it wasn’t looking good. But we pulled back and won by four.
“We were very happy with how we finished. A lot of boys stood up.
“I suppose Downings were struggling a wee bit with injuries as well at the time but they had a good win last weekend (over Fanad).
“We were happy with the performance and the way we played and to get the result was better again.”
Killybegs are Cloughaneely’s opponents on Saturday evening.
The Fishermen won’t have their county stars Hugh McFadden and Eoghan ‘Ban’ Gallagher but showed in 2024 that they can still compete strongly in the second tier even without their main men.
“It’s always a difficult game with Killybegs.
“Even without the two boys, they still have quality with (Jack) McSharry, Seamus Óg Byrne and the Cunninghams (Ryan and Conor).
“Those boys will need watching. Killybegs always produce good footballers.”
It will be an interesting campaign ahead in Division 2.
Some of the teams who have dropped down to the second tier are down some important players this year while the promoted sides in Burt and Red Hughs look like they will be competitive.
That could lead to plenty of congestion and teams taking points off one another.
“It’s a hard league to call.
“If you looked at it last year, you would have said Dungloe were the stand-out team and would get promoted and possibly Ballyshannon.
“But this year, it looks like it will be tight.
“There’s a lot of derbies in it as well especially over Inishowen. They can take on a life of their own.
“Buncrana and Malin have come down and they would probably be the two favourites to go up and Glen will be in there too as a senior championship team now.
“But it’s very hard to call. You have a lot of derbies and there’s going to be a lot of travelling too.
“There’s not a lot of free weekends either over the course of the league – I think there’s only three.
“A lot of the games were called off last week and you have to fit them in somewhere then and that mightn’t suit you.
“Our next free weekend is the May Bank Holiday and one of our boys is getting married that weekend and one of the Glen boys is getting married so that ruled that weekend out straight away for it to be re-fixed.
“If you lost another game then, it would be hard to fit them all in.”
Cloughaneely have made peace with the fact that they won’t have star forward Donnachadh Ó Baoighill for the early stages of the season.
“Donnachadh is with the Under 20s. We won’t have him for however long that lasts.
“Seamus Doogan is up with that panel as well but he was released for the Downings game. I don’t know what the story will be this weekend.
“It’s good for the two boys to be involved and it’s not an issue at all for us.
“Donnachadh is a very good player and you’d like to have him every day of the week.
“He puts in a serious effort to get up to that level.
“It’s great for our club to have two men involved in a county team that is going very well.
“We would like them for the club but you have to give them that chance as well.”