Donegal’s White determined to grasp promotion opportunity

By Shaun Casey

THINGS could have been a lot easier for Donegal. In an alternative universe, they’re sitting back, relaxing this weekend, already beginning to plan for an assault on the Division Two league title.

But rarely in football are things as straightforward as that. Tipperary throw a massive spanner into the works at Clonmel last weekend, beating their visitors by the minimum of margins to postpone – but not cancel – their promotion party.

James Daly’s girls have another crack at it on Sunday at the more familiar surroundings of O’Donnell Park, Letterkenny as they take on pointless Wexford, who have already been dumped down to the third tier.

Winning is the most important thing for Donegal as they eye up Division One football in 2027, but putting those Tipperary demons to bed is just as important.

“We were quite disappointed with our performance against Tipperary, we could possibly be already promoted if we had of got a result last weekend and that would have lessened the pressure,” said ace forward Susann White.

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“We didn’t put in the performance and now we’ve put ourselves under a wee bit of pressure going into this weekend but it’s where we want to be.

“We said from the beginning of the year that we wanted to get promoted and we know if we win on Sunday, we’ll get that, so we just have to park what happened against Tipperary and give it absolutely everything.

“Wexford are a team that really have nothing to lose coming up against us, so they’ll be coming to play. They’re not going to travel to Donegal and not put in a performance, so I suppose it’s up to us to get our heads right and have no regrets.”

Defeats like that Tipperary one can linger but White insists her side are determined to turn things around.

“The majority of us have watched it back and credit to Tipperary, some of their scores were very well worked. Personally, I felt that we had enough opportunities to win the match and to get scores. Tipperary took their chances and we didn’t and that’s just the bottom line.

“It was definitely a hard one to take but it’s maybe something we need to come back to rather than dwell on because we can’t get too caught up on that game, we do have to learn from it and just get back to what we’ve been doing for the majority of the campaign.”

It’s been a competitive campaign to say the least. In Donegal’s last three outings, they’ve lost to table-toppers Cavan by two points, beaten Mayo by the narrowest of margins and lost to the Premier County by a single point.

“When you look at Division Two, Cavan are promoted but when you look at results, there haven’t been many massive wins for teams, maybe just the odd one,” White continued.

“Division Two is a very close-knit league and there’s not a lot between teams. You’re never really guaranteed a result against anybody because it’s a very competitive division and things change very quickly.

“Our last three games have been very close and there’s nothing between those teams. Division Two has always been that way, it was the same for us last year, we had a lot of very close games.

“All you can do is learn from the game previously, whether it’s a win or a loss but for this time of year, competitive games are massive and you take a lot of learnings from those matches.”

Wexford gained promotion to Division Two last season, alongside Cavan, but are set to make an immediate return to Division Three. Donegal haven’t faced them in recent seasons, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be taking their challenge lightly.

“To be honest, we’ve never came up against Wexford, and they’ve had a tough Division Two campaign coming up from Division Three,” she continued.

“But the other side of it is that when you look at the results they have got, they only lost to Tyrone by four points, against Cavan it was similar (two points) so they’ve got close to teams but haven’t been able to get over the line.”