Jack: Donegal a test like no other

Jack O’Connor and Kerry have no first-hand experience of Jimmy McGuinness’ Donegal in championship, but the Kingdom coach only had to rewind to last August for the scale of the challenge facing them in next weekend’s All-Ireland quarter-final.

“I was at the All-Ireland semi-final last year [between Dublin and Donegal] and it was Gaelic football as we’d never seen it before. But that’s the huge challenge for us as coaches and management.

“McGuinness has a fantastic system going there. They’re an absolutely serious team, within a kick of a ball of getting to a final last year. It’s a great challenge for us this week to plan our strategy for them. They have certainly moved the goalposts as regards strategy.

“They’ve some outstanding footballers — Michael Murphy is probably the best full-forward in the country at the moment — and they have massive reservoirs of fitness and strength built up, so we’ll see how some of the older legs of some of our fellas deal with that. Lots of people are saying that when we get to Croke Park it’ll expose the legs, but we’ll see about that.”

O’Connor believes Donegal have pushed back the frontiers in terms of fitness, tackling and devising a great defensive system.

He added: “We’re not expecting a pile of pretty football in Croke Park but we’ll be doing our best to keep it as open as we can.”

The Kerry coach accepted Saturday’s facile 19-point win over Clare was worthless in terms of preparing them for the intensity of the Ulster champions, but said the dressing room was emphatic in their desire to maintain the momentum.

“We had a huge high last weekend and we were afraid of what happened to us earlier in the year when we beat Dublin in Croke Park [in the league] and then we were as flat as pancakes the following week in Tralee against Armagh. We know what’s got us here — hard work — and we wanted to keep that momentum going.”