A two-fold focus for Donegal with visit of the Kingdom

By Michael McMullan

JIM McGuinness was content to get two points in the bag but is already looking forward to Sunday’s Division One visit of Kerry to Ballyshannon.

While blooding new players and looking ahead to the summer is their league priority, the Donegal manager is still looking at areas for improvement ahead of their showdown with the Kingdom.

Donegal led Dublin by double scores at half-time before being pegged back and Shea Malone’s goal proved the difference in a 1-20 to 0-20 victory.

“They overloaded on their own kick-out and we struggled to get our big men to match,” he said of Dublin’s passport back into contention.

“For about a 10-minute period they really did damage on their own kick-out and they probably scored off every one of them as well

“We had to try and find a way to get more bodies across to the strong side and compete with them more in the second half.

“I don’t know what their scoring average was, but their shot-to-score ratio,” he added of Dublin’s third quarter.

“I would say it was very high, it felt like they scored on every attack maybe for the first 10 or 15 minutes.

“That’s a couple of things right away that we’ll be looking at heading into next week.”

Sunday is a first meeting of the counties since last summer’s All-Ireland final but McGuinness remains consistent with his messaging on what Donegal are looking for from the early part of the season.

“It’s good to get the points on the board I suppose,” he said. “At the end of the day, nothing’s going to change in our own heads what we want to get out of the National League.

“We want to get depth; we want to get young players blooded if we can and we want to create as many opportunities for as many people.

“That’s the number one priority. If we lose a couple of games, we’re not going to fret. The great thing about tonight (Saturday’s win over Dublin) is another four points might be enough.

“That’s the positive going down the road because it will allow potentially more flexibility. We have six more games. That’s the way we’re looking at it.”