BY MATTHEW WILSON
DONEGAL senior football manager, Jim McGuinness, took to the stage at the Donegal GAA Awards night at the Abbey Hotel on Saturday night, discussing the intercounty campaign that his side experienced.
The Donegal side successfully defended their Ulster title, with an extra-time victory over Armagh in the showpiece before coming out on the wrong side in the All-Ireland Final against Kerry.
Talking about the year, McGuinness felt that apart from the All-Ireland Final it was the perfect one, labelling the Ulster Final win as the ‘best he’s ever seen’.
“Bar the final it was the perfect year”, said McGuinness. “Going back-to-back in Ulster is very difficult and I don’t think any Donegal team has gone three-in-a-row so that’s a huge challenge for us next season.
“Personally I feel that this year’s Ulster Final was the best that I’ve ever seen, been involved in or experienced even so I have to give the fellas huge credit for that.
“That was a mammoth task, an Armagh team that really had us in their sights. I think it’ll be the same next year, there’s no doubt about that and they really want to get one over on us.
“They haven’t got that Ulster medal and they were coming hard for us. The fact that we were able to withstand that and play some brilliant football.
“I suppose the year before, we were hanging on a bit at times, we were four points down twice. We had the mental intensity or energy to stay in the game.
“This year, two times we were seven points up and played some brilliant football. That’s certainly a game when you’re long gone out of the job that you’d like to sit down and watch again.
“There was some brilliant football, we had to go to the well and everybody stood up to a man so that was a huge highlight.
“To take the Anglo Celt back to Donegal is a massive thing. It’s very difficult to win the All-Ireland, it’s very difficult to win the Anglo Celt.
“Certainly, when you have that at the front of the bus on the way home, it’s a huge thing for Donegal.”
Donegal’s superb season saw them go on and reach the county’s fourth ever All-Ireland decider however, it didn’t go how they had hoped as they suffered a ten-point defeat to Kerry.
The Donegal boss said that the group didn’t bring their true colours that day although, following several conversations in the aftermath, the panel now know where they went wrong that day.
There were a lot of learnings from that All-Ireland Final defeat according to McGuinness and there are things that the group want to work on ahead of the start of the new campaign in eight weeks time.
“Obviously the (All-Ireland) final itself, we were delighted to be there. We’ve had a lot of conversations since the All-Ireland and we just didn’t bring our true colours, that’s the reality of the situation.
“I think there’s a lot of learning in the game for us. I think there’s a lot of people to my right here now that have a good idea why the game was lost.
“There’s certainly things that we want to work on and things that we want to bring forward for next season.
‘There’s no sentiment in football, that’s the reality. Kerry were at it, they took the game to us in the first quarter and we had a battle on our hands after that.
“We’ve a lot of learnings to take from the game but at the same time there’s a lot of talent over there. There’s a lot of good fellas over there, a lot of people that are very dedicated over there.”
