New Rebel crop won’t buckle

WHILE the rest of the GAA world had been concentrating on the puzzling volatility of Donegal football after defeat at home to Antrim only a few short weeks ago, John Joe Doherty was in the business of renewal and regeneration.

He has gone about his work in such a typically low key way that even the recent wins over Derry and Galway have barely registered — lost in all the hoopla surrounding the progress made by Antrim since that dark day in Ballybofey.

So inconspicuously have the perennial championship jesters arrived at the last eight that it appears even in the aftermath of the last two qualifier wins that the discussion on both games was as much about Galway’s and Derry’s demise as it was about Donegal’s rehabilitation.