Home advantage is important for Donegal says Gilmore

By Shaun Casey

DONEGAL boast a perfect record of three wins from three outings on home turf throughout their Division Two league campaign this season and sharpshooter Gerard Gilmore says that’s something that they targeted from the start of the year.

Donegal have welcomed Tyrone and Kerry to Letterkenny this season and have picked up maximum points. They’ll be on home soil once again in their final round clash as they host Derry in a winner takes all battle.

Should Donegal win Saturday, then they’ll secure their status in Division Two while Derry face into the exact same scenario, with both teams currently on four-points. “At the start of the year, Mickey and the boys did set out our stall to target our home games,” said Gilmore.

“We’re trying to make our home advantage count and make sure that it’s not easy for teams to come to Letterkenny and play us. We love playing there and the pitch usually suits us so hopefully we can keep that winning streak that home advantage has given us.”

On the do or die nature of this weekend’s huge encounter, Gilmore is expecting a full-blooded battle with the Oak Leaf County with the competitive nature of the Division Two league set to continue.

“We have to win to try and stay up in the division and that’ll be a massive positive for Donegal hurling if we can stay in Division Two because we’re learned a lot so far in our first year in it,” continued the Setanta clubman.

“If we can find out feet and stay up and bring that into next year, knowing we can hurl with these teams then that would be a massive positive and hopefully in a few years’ time we can push on again.

“It’s been really competitive and some of the scorelines haven’t done us justice, against Kildare and Down. We leaked three goals each in those two goals and at the end of the day that was the difference.

“Ourselves, Meath, Derry and Kerry, they’ve all been very tight games. Meath beat us by a point and on a different day that game could have gone our way. Then the Kerry game, nobody expected that win apart from us.

“Derry is the big one now this week. It has been very competitive and it’s good for hurling at the end of the day, it’s good for Division Two as well to say that each team is confident of competing at that level.”