Ross Wherity is prepared to put his money where his mouth is and back his native Donegal to deliver a stunning surprise win over Dublin.

Brian McEniff fancies Jim McGuinness on Sunday to make up for the last time he faced Jim Gavin in Championship football.

It was the day Donegal’s ‘likeable losers’ tag stuck.

Down the years there was a natural trepidation ingrained in Donegal supporters looking ahead to the next championship fixture.

At the time, it was labelled the night of the long knives. Brian McIver’s status as Donegal senior team manager wasn’t even on the agenda at the September 2008 sitting of county committee; he was just in Ballybofey to give his annual report.

For 16 years now, Kieran McKeever has carried a mantle that he doesn’t want any more.

Ireland Olympic team manager Patsy McGonagle has rejected the assertions made against Gaelic games and the GAA by Jerry Kiernan.

A new backroom with familiar faces was the method of hiring used by Donegal manager Jim McGuinness.

It must be the northern air. It must be something. What else can explain the way successful managers are treated at the tip of the country?

There were some big casualties in the Raidió na Gaeltachta Donegal SFC at the weekend in its first season using first round groups.

The former landmark Ard Rí hotel and grounds in Waterford city, bought for a reported €15m in 2006 for a proposed €400m mixed use development, has been put on the market for €750,000.

ULSTER SFC QUARTER-FINAL:

The GAA has confirm Paul Earley as the new Irish International Rules manager.

Packie Bonner says he’d love to see Jim McGuinness take up the challenge of a job in soccer and believes his fellow Donegal man would be “up to the challenge”.

An All-Ireland senior title-winning captain at just 23, the scorer of 1-4 in the final and the man-of-the-match to boot. It was quite a Sunday for Donegal's Michael Murphy.

The biggest cheer at Croke Park yesterday was reserved for victorious manager Jim McGuinness, who was hailed by Michael Murphy as the man who brought Sam Maguire back to Donegal after a 20-year absence.

Ask Brian McEniff if a Jim McGuinness-style contract would have worked 10 years ago and he digests the question.

There’s only one thing more likely than the progress of a side with a navvy’s appetite for work to the All-Ireland final to change the shape of football. And that’s a second team with similar attributes.

Around about halfway through their respective 11-year inter-county careers to date, Colm McFadden and Rory Kavanagh started spending evenings in the gym at Letterkenny Community Centre.

The night Donegal retained the Ulster championship, Jim McGuinness looked out over the Diamond in Donegal town and let his mind wander in whatever direction it wished to go.

Louth team advisor Brian McEniff has wholeheartedly endorsed Peter Fitzpatrick’s assessment of Dublin as “a machine“.

SATURDAY

The disagreement between Donegal manager Jim McGuinness and axed defender Kevin Cassidy is such that the All-Star feels that he has played his last inter-county game.

LOUTH footballers have received a huge boost with the news that Brian McEniff will play a more significant role for the Wee County in 2012.

BACK in 1992, when they won the All-Ireland for the first time, the composition of the Donegal team was such that it rewarded players nearing the end of their careers and held out the promise of further glory for those starting out on theirs.

BRIAN McENIFF has crunched the numbers and come up with a bottom line figure, 14 points.

OFTEN the measure of a team is not by how it wins or how often it wins but by how it loses.

The wildest colts can make the best horses — Plutarch (46-120 AD)

TODAY Ulster, tomorrow the world.

HARD to believe that Fermanagh are still waiting! It didn’t happen for Down until 1959 and it took a further 13 years before Donegal made the breakthrough.

DONEGAL’S 1992 All-Ireland winning manager Brian McEniff has called on the county board to act swiftly on indiscipline in club matches or risk players suffering more serious injuries than Leo McLoone’s broken eye socket.

Diarmuid O’Flynn and Fintan O’Toole argue both sides of the debate

MAYBE it’s because they’re not listening. Maybe it’s because they simply don’t care but Louth’s relationship with the O’Byrne Cup is a love affair that is not supposed to augur well.

LOUTH’S emergence into the bright lights of a first Leinster final for the first time in half a century is a remarkable story all in itself, but it is one accompanied by a collection of equally eye-catching individual tales.

BRIAN McENIFF enjoyed a long a fruitful managerial career with Donegal, Sligo, Ulster and Ireland before stepping back into a well-earned retirement but the 1992 All-Ireland winning coach has returned to the sidelines in recent weeks with Louth.

Shane Lennon has been named to start for Louth in tomorrow's Leinster SFC quarter-final against Kildare, despite suffering a broken thumb against Longford last time out.

AS his life in football has been full of them, John Joe Doherty knows the value of taking a second chance.

DELEGATES were in no real mood to embrace changes in the playing rules experimented in the subsidiary competitions and the league in the early motions debated at last night’s opening session of the GAA Congress in Newcastle, Co. Down.

NEW Ireland boss Anthony Tohill insists he has no interest in recruiting players who view the International Rules series as a junket to Australia.

Anthony Tohill has been revealed as the new Ireland International Rules manager at a press conference in Croke Park this afternoo

TYRONE and Donegal have voted against the GAA’s proposal to formally recognise the Gaelic Players Association. The counties will oppose any steps to come to a formal agreement between the Association and the players’ body when Central Council meets Saturday.

FORMER Tipperary chairman John Costigan revealed that “one of the best discussions the county board has had this year” took place in Thurles before delegates gave the interim agreement a resounding thumbs up.

THE fallout over the failure to appoint a new senior football manager in Donegal continued yesterday with the county squad releasing a statement strongly critical of the county’s board’s handling of the process.

John Joe Doherty has been reinstalled as the favourite to take over from Brian McIver as manager of the Donegal senior football team, following a County Board meeting at Ballybofey last night.