Cassidy dropped from Donegal panel

All-Star wing back Kevin Cassidy has been dropped from the Donegal senior football panel, following suggestions that Jim McGuinness was unhappy with the defender's participation in a newly-published book.

It has been reported that Cassidy was "released from the panel with immediate effect" after a meeting with McGuinness in Letterkenny yesterday afternoon.

In the book, titled 'This Is Our Year' and written by Fermanagh journalist Declan Bogue, Cassidy was very critical of previous Donegal managements, especially John Joe Doherty who was in charge before McGuinness.

Cassidy gives some revealing insights into the Donegal set-up and their regime under manager McGuinness, who is understood to be angered by the player's failure to consult with him over his participation in the book.

The Gweedore man is quoted as saying: "Jim's warm-ups are unbelievable. You feel like dying in the middle of them. We might have warmed up with the ball for half an hour. Then we go into springs, eighty-metre sprints, one hundred-metre sprints, shuttle runs, cones on twenty yards either side of you and you have to sprint to the cones and back again.

"You have four men in a line, and if there is any more than a second or two seconds of a difference between the four men, you go again. There is no slacking off, there is no way out. It's the hardest I've ever trained in my life."

Cassidy also explains that the inspiration behind the wristbands worn from the Ulster quarter-final against Cavan came from American football safety Brian 'Wolverine' Dawkins.

"It just jumped out at me that this guy was exactly like half of our team - a lovely lad off the field, but an animal on it," he said.

"I asked Maxi to bring the laptop to training and put it on YouTube. I wondered if there was anything of this that we could tap into because we were too nice."

Cassidy rejoined the panel for the 2011 campaign after retiring in the aftermath of a heavy All-Ireland qualifier to Armagh in June of last year.

McGuinness asked that none of his Donegal players attend the book launch in Derrybeg last Saturday, despite many being invited by Cassidy.

The player himself has defended his participation in the book. "I said from day one that it would be honest," he explained.

"There was no point in keeping details away or trying to be nice to this person or that person. It was just my opinion on things."