'We massively underachieved in our eyes. When Jim came back, standards were raised'
TWELVE MONTHS ON and a vastly different All-Ireland semi-final experience for Donegal.
Last year they were left with the stinging pain of regret as their second-half fadeout was the root cause of their loss to Galway, only scoring a single point after the 47th minute of the game.
Today had the strong sense of satisfaction, posting 3-13 on the board after half-time illustrated their power in the closing period on this occasion as they blitzed Meath.
“It was a long road back, a hell of a long road back, but delighted to get over the line and obviously go one step further than last year,” remarked manager Jim McGuinness.
“We knew we had trained well, I suppose without covering old ground again, the difference between a one week turnaround and a two week turnaround really. You’re going to get one session done in a one week turnaround, and I would say with a two week turnaround, you’re looking at five or six.
“That’s massive from a coaching point of view, trying to get the information pulled together, but to get out on the pitch and repeatedly work on the things that you feel would be important in the game.
“We spoke about it as coaches in the hotel this morning that it feels like there is a performance in them because a lot of the things that we were looking to achieve in the game, there was a consistency in our training.
“So that’s brilliant and obviously we get another two weeks now into the final and hopefully we can go down the same road.”
Victory propels Donegal back into the final for the first time in 11 years, a wait that captain Patrick McBrearty would not have envisaged at the time.
“Definitely not. When we left here 2014, I didn’t think it would be 2024 until we reached our next semi-final. We massively, massively underachieved from ’14 to ’24 basically, in our eyes.
“When Jim came back, standards were raised back to where they were and we’re just delighted to be back here, but you know they were a barren couple of years.
“We were winning Ulsters, teams were tipping us to go on and win All-Irelands and we couldn’t do on the big days. Getting this man back obviously for that and getting back to days like this two weeks is gonna be massive.”
Donegal’s play was stunning to watch, their running power enabling them to mow Meath down in the second half.
The sequence of play that led to Ciarán Moore netting in the 49th minute encapsulated the range of strengths they have to offer.
“There’s a good bit of commentary about how we play sometimes,” remarked McGuinness.
“And maybe it is a wee bit different than other teams, but without covering the same ground all the time, that’s who we are like at this stage of the game. We know what we want to do and it’s been in our blood for a long, long time and we just try to tap into that and I think it was Finbarr (Roarty) that turned that one over.
“A brilliant turnover and we got all the way up the pitch and made it count which is great. It’s encouraging, we’re creating, even in the (the) first half, we created some goalscoring opportunities and we kind of felt that if we could keep at it and keep trusting ourselves, we could get into more goalscoring opportunity moments and that’s the way it panned out.”
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