Donnellan injury worry for Salthill

GALWAY star Michael Donnellan is Salthill/Knocknacarra’s main injury concern ahead of the All-Ireland club final against St Gall’s on St Patrick’s Day.

Donnellan suffered a recurrence of a long-running groin injury during a challenge match at Pearse Stadium on Saturday.

Meanwhile victory in Tullamore on Sunday has rekindled hopes of a qualifying place in the Allianz National Football League for Tyrone. However, manager Mickey Harte admitted yesterday that the immediate priority will be to improve their position in the group.

That may be helped by the fact that the re-scheduling of the game with Cork means that they will be at home for the next three weekends.

The All-Ireland champions won the League titles of 2002 (for the first time) and 2003 and were knocked out in the last two semi-finals - by Galway in a replay in Pearse Stadium and by Wexford in Portlaoise. At the launch of the competition Harte made no secret of his desire to win another title and while emphasising the importance of starting well, he pointed out that they succeeded three years ago despite losing two of their first three rounds.

That’s the position in which they find themselves currently, after losing to Dublin in the stormy opening game in Omagh and then going under to Fermanagh.

“We’re still not out of danger, we’re at the wrong end of the table,” he says. “We still need more points and next Sunday presents another opportunity to grab two more. But Monaghan had a great result against Kerry, losing by just a point. There are no easy games in this division.

“If we get ourselves clear of the relegation zone and we’re looking in the right direction towards the top of the table, then why wouldn’t we try for it!” Against Offaly on Sunday they had to call on all of their available resources to win, and Harte acknowledged that for a while it didn’t look as if they’d win: “We were just hanging in there in the first half and even up to midway in the second half it was still a knife-edge game. The players we brought on had a big influence, but only because the rest of the players were working so hard around them.”

Harte said Tyrone had played well at various stages of their McKenna Cup campaign but not as well as they finished against Offaly.

“This was far and away our best football, but it was all contained in the last 15 minutes, the last 12 minutes even. Up to that we were playing decent football, but we weren’t really cutting it.

“Offaly were totally committed to that game, right from the off. They laid down the marker to say they were interested in getting points and they believed they were capable of doing it. It’s not all about us not playing well. You can only play as well as your opponents let you and up until the last ten minutes Offaly were matching us stride for stride.”

Ciaran McManus felt that mistakes made in the first half, when they gave away silly frees had been costly. Apart from that, Tyrone were fresher, having had a free Sunday when their game with Cork was called off.

“When we were three points up they brought on four subs and freshened things up,” said McManus.

“We didn’t match that and that was the difference in the end.”