McGuinness hits back at Moyna ‘bully’ claims

DONEGAL manager Jim McGuinness has hit back at Niall Moyna’s claims he “bullied” Martin McElhinney into playing for his county the same day the midfielder was due to line out for DCU in the O’Byrne Cup.

McGuinness insisted McElhinney was supposed to be part of his panel that day until DCU changed their fixture. He said his panel filled in a spreadsheet at the start of the year to show their availability and challenge games were arranged around these.

“Seemingly Meath requested the game be brought forward to Saturday night and DCU agreed,” McGuinness said.

“When Martin told me he had a game on Saturday evening, I said to him we have our first league game in two weeks and I had all the players from the other college back to get a look at them. I said to him how can we expect to play you if we haven’t seen you play.

“I’ve known him going back to his days as a student in Limavady. When I took over the Donegal job Martin was recovering from major groin surgery and his fitness levels dropped. Over the last 18 months I have got the best advice for Martin and have had a strength and conditioning coach working with him one-to-one once week.

“After investing so much time and expertise do people think I would abuse such a player? It’s ridiculous, I’m annoyed someone would make that claim.”