By Matthew Wilson
The Donegal minor footballers got their competitive campaign underway on Saturday and manager Karl Lacey expressed that they’re delighted to get things up and running.
Donegal travelled to Dunsilly for a meeting with Antrim on Saturday afternoon where a last-gasp point earned the home side a share of the spoils.
It was a superb game of football where 20 Donegal players got their first competitive minutes under their belt and Lacey will be looking to build on that for the remainder of the league campaign.
“It’s obviously great to get the competitive games up and running, to get into the league format and get continuous games now every weekend”, said Lacey.
“It’s very hard to know where you’re at leading into that so we’ve been carrying a big squad and things are going really well at training, the boys are applying themselves really well.
“We got a nice test against Antrim. Antrim played last weekend so that kind of fed into their performance there. You could see the hunger and the hurt after getting beaten by Monaghan last weekend.
“I think we maybe failed to match that hunger and work rate for that first game, it took us a while to get up to the pitch of it. We’re just delighted to get up and running and delighted to get a competitive game.
“We got a good number of players in there to get a look at our squad as well and we’ll build that over the course of the league so we’re happy out.”
Having managed the Donegal Under 16 side last term, the Donegal Town man is overseeing the minor team this season and he’s enjoying the experience so far.
Lacey would have worked with a large number of these players last year in the Under 16 setup and he labelled his group as a ‘credit to work with.’.
They’ve been training hard in pre-season and the Four Masters clubman is pleased that they now have competitive encounters to focus on at the weekends, with Monaghan coming to Convoy to face his side this Saturday.
“It’s great. They’re an absolute credit to work with and they’re a credit to their families and their clubs. They come in and they apply themselves really well every night we train.
“The league games are going to come thick and fast so it’s important now that we keep our heads down. We’ve a big game to look forward to next Saturday against Monaghan and Armagh the following week.
“We’re just delighted to get into that cycle of games, training during the week and then into games so it’ll be a nice focus now for us.”
