FORMER Donegal All-Ireland winner Mark McHugh insists that his Galway connections haven’t helped him to get a one up for his county ahead of Sunday’s semi-final.
The Kilcar native is part of the Moycullen management team, where injured Galway captain Seán Kelly, plies his trade, and has plenty of knowledge about the goings on in the county, but he has found getting information difficult.
“It’s good craic down there and I was down last weekend, they’re keeping their cards to their chest and they’ll not tell me anything,” McHugh said at the launch of AIB’s Volunteer VIP competition on Wednesday.
“It’s funny, if I wanted to see any other team in an All-Ireland final it would be Galway, I went to college down there and they were always my second favourite team.
“They don’t know when they’re beat and you can go back to the Dublin game to see that. At half-time Dublin were looking very comfortable and everyone is saying Dublin had the week off and Galway will probably tire, but they kicked on and they’re tough men.
“I don’t buy all the injury stuff, they are struggling but Pádraic Joyce seems more old style and he’ll just say ‘go out and play’ and he’ll bank on this again.
“I don’t have inside knowledge and if I was in Seán Kelly’s position I wouldn’t be telling my coach that’s from the other county.
“I text Sean after the Dublin game congratulating them before the two teams were fixed to play and that’s the last time I spoke to him.
“I think Joyce will start the players he might be worried about because he’ll not want to waste two subs on them.
“Instead of taking them on and lasting 10 or 12 minutes then you’re wasting subs so he’ll start them and see how long they can go and that’s what he did against Dublin.”
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