Murphy wants Donegal club games shelved until after final

Donegal captain Michael Murphy has called for the local county championship to be postponed so Jim McGuinness’s squad can concentrate fully on next month’s Ulster final against either Cavan or Monaghan.

The reigning provincial and All-Ireland champions reached Ulster’s decider for the third consecutive year thanks to Sunday’s edgy three-point defeat of Down in Cavan and Murphy admitted the prospect of club action between now and July 21 is far from ideal.

Donegal faced Down without the services of All Star pair Karl Lacey and Neil Gallagher, lost Ryan Bradley and Frank McGlynn to concussion in the first-half and needed 66 minutes from Patrick McBrearty, who was on painkillers for a tooth abscess.

All five are expected to be fit in four weeks’ time but players and management are understandably eager to reduce the possibility of picking up any further fitness concerns in the meantime.

As things stand, three of the four county championship groups are down for decision next weekend, with the fourth due to be wrapped up the following week, although the county board accommodated the senior team prior to the last two provincial finals.

“From a county perspective, we need to get everyone out on the pitch and it’s important we can get our bodies in shape,” said Murphy. “It’s whatever way the county board see it really. For us to prepare to the best we can for an Ulster final we’d like them to look after us in that way.

“I know it’s not easy to prepare fixtures but we’d like to be given the chance to prepare as best we can and get bodies healed up. We’ve no say in the matter as players and all we can do is go out on Saturday or Sunday and do the best we can. All we can ask for is to be helped as best we can, which we have been in the last couple of years.”

McGuinness had queried the scheduling of the championship fixtures in the build-up to last Sunday’s game but refused to be drawn on the issue after a win which Mark McHugh believes should give Donegal supporters plenty of food for thought ahead of another Ulster final.

“I didn’t like the attitude of the Donegal supporters during the week at all,” said the Kilcar man. “Everybody I was meeting on the street, they were just assuming that we were going to win this game easy and it is not like that in football.

“In the dressing room, Jim and Rory [Gallagher] didn’t take it for granted. We knew exactly the battle that we were going to come up against and we stood up to that. We came out on top, [even though] we might not be totally happy with the overall performance.”

Much of that can be attributed to Down, who absorbed the lessons of the meeting with Donegal in last year’s provincial final.

The difficulties Donegal experienced against a side that sought to play them at their own suffocating game made for painful viewing but offered Down a shot at victory which they were unable to take and possibly even a blueprint for success against the champions.

“Down had to [do that] because they got such a beating in the second half last year,” said McHugh. “It is a sign of a good team. I don’t know what way teams are going to approach us. Every team we face, we don’t look at how they are going to approach us, we look at [how] we are going to approach them.

“That is what we are going to do with every match. It is what Jim and Rory have set out for us and we are going to fully focus on our own performance and whatever it is going to take to beat the opposition.”