Donegal savour sweet win but it's no cakewalk as rivals serve up another classic
TIGHT SPOT: Armagh’s Conor Turbitt, with Conor Mc Cahill, Jason Mc Gee and Michael Langan of Donegal
Donegal claimed their fourth win from four games in Division One on Sunday afternoon. None of them can have been quite as sweet as the latest.
This game has shot to the top of the pile of football’s modern rivalries after a pair of impossibly close Ulster finals won by Donegal, and even last year’s league meeting when Aidan Forker got himself sent off when welcoming Michael Murphy back after two years out.
This latest chapter was packed with as much entertainment as any of them.
Jim McGuiness’s side led for all but a minute or so of this one. They opened the scoring within 20 seconds, got dragged level after 21 minutes, but then kept Kieran McGeeney’s men at arm’s length for the rest of it.
It was no cakewalk.
Leading by four points with a handful of minutes to go, they conceded a questionable penalty for a tussle between the inrushing Jarly Og Burns and Caolan McGonagle only for Oisin Conaty to miss from the spot and from the rebound.
Gavin Mulreany tipped the first effort, struck low, onto the post. Brendan McCole blocked the follow-up. Not the first time a penalty has proven to be so important when these two meet. Here’s hoping they meet again later in the year. Again.
This being the modern game, Armagh won the toss and decided to play into the stiff wind for the first 35 minutes and hoping that they could finish the game with momentum in the way we have seen time and again under the new rules.
They reached the interval four points down, which was a definite result, but with the wind and rain giving way to a strange blue hue in the sky and a bright yellow orb that bathed the entire pitch and stadium in an unfamiliar light.
Armagh had plenty of possession in that period and never let Donegal get out of sight.It was actually level with 21 minutes played after Oisin O’Neill kicked a second point inside 60 seconds, his first followed by a fist pump and roar to the home crowd.
No less than 10,256 people squeezed into this fantastically compact and atmospheric ground and Donegal had a couple of two-pointers from Michael Langan to thank for their lead on the change of ends.
Nine failed shots on goal held the visitors back, three of them two-point efforts. Ambition is one thing but almost half of Donegal’s ‘misses’ actually fell short while Ryan McHugh should have tapped over instead of blasting low from distance 25 minutes in.
It all left things finely balanced at half-time.
Armagh’s response fell foul to the same squandering of scores as Donegal in the third quarter. Five times they failed to find the target before Conor O’Donnell burst through at the end other end to score the game’s first goal.
It came on the back of endless possession for the visitors whose patience was rewarded when O’Donnell, so quiet to that point after such a strong start to the season, turned on the jets and powered his finish home.
It left Armagh seven points behind and the game continued on the same way from then on, neither side able to really string together a period of dominance, and that suited Donegal much more given their advantage on the scoreboard.
Part of Armagh’s problem was that increasing profligacy in front of goal and they managed just one two-pointer all day. Donegal hit four, had that O’Donnell goal and the brilliant intervention of Mulreany and McCole at the end.
More of this please.
O O’Neill (0-6, 3f); C McConville and R McQuillan (both 0-3); D McMullan (0-2, 1 2ptr); J Og Burns, C O’Neill, B Crealey, C Turbitt and O Conaty (all 0-1).
M Langan (0-4, 2 2 ptrs); G Mulreany (0-4, 2 2-ptrs); C O’Donnell (1-1); J McGee (0-4); O Caulfield and O Gallen (both 0-2); E Ban Gallagher, R McHugh, S O’Donnell (all 0-1).
B Hughes; J Duffy, G Murphy, P McGrane; R McQuillan, T Kelly, J Og Burns; C O’Neill, B Crealey; D McMullan, C Turbitt, G McCabe; C McConville, O O’Neill, O Conaty.
T McCormack for Crealey (11-14); F O’Brien for Duffy (63); T McCormacl for McConville (68).
G Mulreaney; E Ban Gallagher, B McCole, P Mogan; R McHugh, C McGonagle, F Roarty; H McFadden, M Langan; S O’Donnell, C O’Donnell, C Moore; O Caulfield, J McGee, O Gallen.
T Carr for O’Donnell (47); S Malone for Caulfield (53); P O’Hare for Gallen (56); Domhnall Mac Giolla Bhride for Moore (65).
B Cawley (Kildare).
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