TOMÁS QUINN: The road to retention full of potholes
On Saturday night at headquarters, All-Ireland champions Donegal were welcomed back to Jones’ Road by a guard of honour from a team that spent the next 70 minutes doing whatever it took to beat them. Donegal earned the right to this guard of honour last year but it’s the first sign of how things have changed for them and how this year is going to be different than anything they’ve faced before. It’s been well documented at this stage how hard it is for teams to replicate All Ireland success. This Donegal team has already had an unbelievable journey and if any team were to retain Sam Maguire then why not them?
They started the game on Saturday night with a championship-like team and it was clear they weren’t using the game to experiment. They set up in a style we are accustomed although they didn’t have quite the same bite in the tackle or fitness to smother Kildare ball carriers. They made too many individual errors and gave away two very soft goals which will disappoint Jim McGuinness. But he can be very happy with the response of his players when it looked as though the game was going away from them. That show of character and determination will give him positives to look at when they go back training this week.
