By Niall Gartland

DECLAN Bonner enjoyed a dream first season in charge of Erne Gaels, steering the Belleek-based club to their first Senior Championship in a full 43 years, and now he’s looking forward to seeing what 2025 has to offer.

Erne Gaels overcame Enniskillen Gaels last November in a replay encounter on a scoreline of 1-13 to 1-9, and Donegal legend Bonner recognises that it’s a long road back to the top.

Their season gets underway this Saturday at home to Ederney in the first round of the Club Players Competition, and it will afford Bonner and his right-hand man Paul Brennan an opportunity to try out some less established players.

“We’ve three lads involved with the county seniors and another two with the Fermanagh hurlers, we don’t have a huge pool from which to pick but the lads are looking forward to getting back playing competitive football again. Lads who maybe didn’t get a huge amount of game-time last year will definitely get their chances in the coming weeks.”

He added: “One thing we found last season was that the group were willing to listen and learn and we got stronger as the season progressed and I can see some similar traits already this year.

“We’ve a good base of work done over the last 10-12 weeks. We only got back on the pitch in the last few weeks to be quite honest but the lads have put in a lot of work between gym-work and conditioning under Ciaran Smith.”

As defending senior championships, Bonner recognises that they’ve a target on their backs, but he considers that there’s a lot of football to be played before the really serious stuff later in the year.

“There’s no doubt there’s a target there, but that was the same last year to a degree with myself and Paul coming in.

“We won the championshpi and had to do it the hard way, all difficult games that went the distance.

“There’s a number of top teams ready to go at it again, and we need to make sure we have everyone back on the pitch.

“It’s a long season and we can see there’s a hunger in the group to go at it again, but the first couple of games in the players’ league probably won’t have a real bearing to what happens further down the line when we go into championship football around the end of August.”

Bonner, who had two stints in charge of Donegal seniors, also says that he isn’t entirely sold on the new batch of rules, wondering whether referees will be able to cope with the raft of changes, particularly at club level.

“Gaelic Football needed a shot in the arm and there a number of rules I certainly agree with, but some of the stuff is going to be hard to implement at club level.

“You’ll have referees coming to ref a club match on their own and it’s going to be very difficult to monitor everything to be quite honest.

“On the flipside referees have been given too much power, I can understand cracking down on ill-discipline but the penalty is too severe. The ball can be moved up 50 yards and that can be the winning or losing of the game particularly with the two-point arc.

“It’s a lot for everyone to take in and as I say I think it’s going to be difficult for referees to police particularly at club level.”