BY RYAN FERRY
DONEGAL joint-captain Shane O’Donnell says there’s a ‘huge buzz’ around Letterkenny as his club St Eunan’s get set to host Sunday’s championship match with Down.
The pitch is currently being redeveloped at MacCumhaill Park and isn’t ready in time for the Ulster Championship and O’Donnell Park has been selected for the quarter-final as a result.
The St Eunan’s club have been busy working hard behind the scenes over the last month to make sure everything goes to plan.
It will be a great occasion for O’Donnell and his clubmates Ciaran Moore, Shaun Patton and Eoin McGeehin to get the opportunity to represent Donegal on home turf.
A crowd of almost nine thousand people will arrive hoping for a good championship encounter and it should be a special day at O’Donnell Park.
“There’s a huge buzz around the town,” said O’Donnell.
“The club are obviously delighted to be hosting it.
“We have a great pitch with some good facilities and there’s a lot of work going on there at the minute with an extra pitch going in, and we got the astro recently enough.
“The club is putting in a lot of work and I heard that Damien McCauley was flat out getting a few steps in so the buzz is good and we are definitely looking forward to it.
“It’s great for the town.”
Donegal received great support during the league and that’s likely to move up a notch or two now in the Ulster Championship.
With a few injuries and Patrick McBrearty retiring, there was a bit of uncertainty over where Donegal were at heading into this year’s campaign after the disappointment of the 2025 All-Ireland Final.
However, Donegal claimed the McKenna Cup and then won six of their eight league matches on their way to Division 1 glory.
“We had a good league campaign. We were very happy with it.
“I suppose it was a big improvement from the league campaign last year.
“We started well in both of them but we fell off towards the latter stages last year.
“We were very happy now with bringing a bit of silverware back to Donegal so we were delighted.”
A host of new players impressed during the league with Shea Malone, Max Campbell, Paul O’Hare, Kieran Gallagher, Sean Martin among the new faces who will be hoping to make the matchday 26 on Sunday and O’Donnell feels the league will have helped to get players up to speed.
“It’s good for momentum getting the games built up.
“Getting the run out in Croke Park is always good especially for the younger players coming through.
“They got a lot of game time in their legs as well which is good to get them up to the standard of the game at the minute because it is very tough and it’s a big step up from minor and even Under 20s.
“It was important to get plenty of minutes into the legs and hopefully it will stand to them later in the year.”
O’Donnell has been made joint-captain this year alongside Michael Langan.
The Deele College teacher is a good role model in general but doesn’t feel the need to give extra pep talks to players breaking through.
“To be fair the bucks that came in this year are sensible enough so there’s not too much babysitting with them.
“They are holding themselves up proud at the minute. They are all flying so it’s great to have them on board.”