Donegal manager Jim McGuinness was pleased with the game time he got into his players, while acknowledging that Armagh were well off full-strength in MacCumhaill Park tonight.
Armagh opted to play pretty much an Under 20 side with Blaine Hughes the only recognised name on show.
There were plenty of mistakes but Donegal were always in command, and ran out 3-16 to 1-6 winners.
“They were a wee bit rusty there – there’s no doubt about that,” said McGuinness after the match.
“I suppose we are fortunate to have a really good pitch in Convoy at the minute, and the transfer between that pitch, and the pitch out there – it was soft out there – and they found it tough going out there physically.
“I thought Armagh did very well for a crowd of young fellas. They had good shape and they worked hard for each other and were composed on the ball. They made it difficult but from our point of view, we are happy that it’s a game that we pretty much got 50/50 in terms of game time for the fellas that were on the bench and the fellas that started, which was a positive.
“We will use it as that, and it was always going to be that once we seen the Armagh team coming in during the week, we knew they were going to be very young and very experimental and nothing in terms of the team that we are going to meet in Round 4 of the league, so we had to plan for that.”
McGuinness was pleased to see a huge crowd in Ballybofey for the first competitive game of the season.
“It was just good to be back in MacCumhaill Park in front of your own supporters.
“We know where we are at and we have a long road to go.
“We have worked hard in pre-season and it probably didn’t show tonight the work that they have done in pre-season but we have another game on Sunday and we are looking forward to that.
“I’d imagine that will be a much sterner test in terms of the calibre of player that will be on the pitch.”
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