McGee happy win over Derry has silenced Donegal critics
The exit of Rory Gallagher in the off-season, the postponed club championship and the departure of four players, including Mark McHugh, off the panel last month had put added pressure on last year’s Ulster runners-up to win on Sunday.
But Donegal dispelled all notions they were a camp in trouble with a composed win against a fancied Derry side playing on their own patch.
“It’s satisfying, that’s probably the one word you’d get from it. A lot was said about us in the run-up to it, saying all was not well in the camp.”
“We knew we were right and we knew we trusted Jim to have the preparation right and we’d have been a bit tired in the league final. Although we didn’t get going 100%, we’d have been happy enough as long as we got over Derry.”
Before and after Sunday’s game, Jim McGuinness mentioned the negativity about Donegal in the media. McGee noticed pessimism too but chose not to heed it.
“At the end of the day youse [the media] can only go by what you see from the outside. Youse have a different perspective. We know what’s going on in the inside and that’s nothing against youse.
“Youse can only go on what you see. We’d have been confident coming up to the Derry game that we had the preparation right and we backed our own players.”
McGee’s team-mate Karl Lacey, looking much fitter in Celtic Park than his 2013 version when he struggled with a knee injury, is happy enough to control the controllables.
“People can say what they want to say, it’s the 30 lads that are there. We are a tight group and we will keep things that way. We will go back to the training ground now and we will keep things tight.”
Travelling regularly to Donegal from Limerick where he has been studying, Lacey is delighted to put his injury problems of last year behind him. “I suppose it took a lot more out of me than I thought it would. It was very frustrating last year and I just never got to those levels which I would like to have been at.”
He is quietly confident Donegal are in a better position than they were when they beat Tyrone at this same stage last year.
“I would like to think we are. We got promotion in the league and I know we didn’t show much in the league final, but we are working hard and we have the fitness levels which we didn’t have last year. We need to push on now. There is no easy game in Ulster and we will see where this takes us.”
