Martin McElhinney says the current Donegal squad is the best he’s been involved in.

My expectation that Fermanagh would make things horrible for Donegal in yesterday’s Ulster final never materialised. Perhaps I hadn’t factored in how much of an occasion this was for the Fermanagh players.

There were fresh-faces aplenty on show at Letterkenny in the respective Donegal and Galway ranks but, in the end, it was left to experience to settle the issue.

AT the halfway point of the decade, I selected the players who were best positioned to make any all-decade side.

All-Ireland winner Patrick McBrearty showed all his big game experience with a dramatic 73rd minute winning point at Pairc Tailteann to send Donegal through to Round 4A of the qualifiers.

Big three, big four, two groups of 16, three tiers, and the Super 8. The GAA is all about the numbers at the minute, writes Oisín McConville.

Frank McGlynn’s insight into Genghis Khan tells of man driven by vision and circumstance to take over most of the known world with brilliant and brutal efficency by Neil Robinson. 

Peadar Healy ventured up to Clones the day after his Cork charges limped out of Pearse Park with their championship status still intact. The Cork football manager couldn’t but be impressed with Donegal’s first-half showing, even more impressed was he with Tyrone’s second-half display. Tyrone did, in Healy’s own words, a Donegal on Donegal.

Séamus Mac Géidigh was broadcaster and manager of RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta’s northwest service in Donegal

Tyrone 0-13 Donegal 0-11: “We became men today.” Seán Cavanagh had proven long before now that he is most certainly one of those but you knew what he meant. This Tyrone team hadn’t earned their spurs before yesterday. Now they have.

Donegal 2-12 Fermanagh 0-11: Since emerging as a force five years ago Donegal have often demonstrated the ability to win games in devastating spells, and they did so again yesterday — this time with 14 men — to swat Fermanagh aside in Ballybofey.

Dublin 1-20 Donegal 0-13: Different week, same old story.

He’s won everything Gaelic football has to offer and been handsomely rewarded with silverware, but Frank McGlynn has revealed his sporting career could have been panned out very differently — if it hadn’t been for Wayne Rooney.

Donegal 1-11 Down 0-11: Frank McGlynn’s goal, after only 68 seconds, fired Donegal to a useful opening-day win over Down, in the Dr McKenna Cup, at Ballybofey.

Late last night, Paul Durcan arrived into Dublin from the Middle East.

Things can change over the next six weeks — ask Kieran Donaghy — but if football’s All Stars were handed out in August, our GAA correspondent would be shaking hands and back-slapping with the following summer achievers.

We’ll come to the football shortly but first yesterday’s All-Ireland hurling semi-final where Brian Gavin did well but should have awarded more frees.

My first permanent teaching post was in St Gerald’s College, Castlebar, 20 years ago this September.

Conor Lane came in for a lot of criticism from Derry manager Brian McIver after Saturday’s qualifier against Galway. Was it with justification?

Donegal 1-9 Derry 0-10: If it was hardly intriguing, it was tight. Mercifully. Because in truth, Saturday’s Ulster SFC semi final in Clones had little else going for it as a spectacle.

Monaghan. March 3, 2012. A turning point in Chrissy McKaigue’s career.

Gaelic football has moved on, but the media and GAA officialdom are clinging to a past that has long since ceased to exist.

"One man practising sportsmanship is far better than 100 teaching it"— Knute Rokne, legendary Notre Dame coach.

Donegal 1-13 Tyrone 1-10: It wasn’t fitting that Donegal won nor was it that Tyrone lost. But there was no denying the appropriateness of Michael Murphy scoring the last three points of the game after enduring a dog of an afternoon.

Two minutes before half-time in the 2011 Ulster semi-final, Tyrone ripped through the blanket and Brian McGuigan fed Stephen O’Neill, who cut inside two Donegal defenders.

Travelling up to Croke Park yesterday morning I had serious concerns as to whether Fintan Goold and, in particular, Eoin Cadogan, were a suitable duo for Cork at midfield.

The gulf in class between the top flight and the rest of the divisions has perhaps never been as wide as this year. So who exactly have been a class apart in the league of its own?

Stephen Griffin's injury-time point secured a 1-09 to 0-12 draw to seal Donegal's passage through to the Allianz Football League Division 1 semi-finals.

Tyrone were plunged into a relegation crisis following a heavy defeat to north-west neighbours Donegal at Ballybofey today.

Donegal 1-13

Donegal 0-12 Fermanagh 2-5

They may have lost their All-Ireland crown in 2014 but Dublin still dominate our team of the last five years.

The year 2002 was a difficult one for me as I spent most of it injured with a complicated ankle problem, writes Tony McEntee.

The nominations have been announced for the GAA GPA Football All-Stars - champions Kerry have 11 nominations and beaten finalists Donegal have nine.

It’s no surprise Kerry lead the way with 11 All Star nominations, two more than beaten finalists Donegal and National League and Leinster winners Dublin.

With the gunsmoke still clearing from the battlefield, Jim McGuinness was trying to puzzle out what had happened and was starting to regret his side’s conservatism.