Daly’s Donegal relishing promotion push

By Shaun Casey

DONEGAL’S promotion push is in their own hands, but boss James Daly doesn’t expect everything to be plain sailing for his side this weekend as they make the long trek to Tipperary.

Donegal are currently placed in second position in the Division Two league table, one-point off table toppers Cavan, with two games remaining against the Premier County and pointless Wexford.

Daly’s girls want to be playing against the top teams in the country next year, and promotion to Division One has been the goal for this campaign. “It’s in our own hands, if we win our next two games we’ll get promoted,” said the Armagh native.

“It’s two big games; Tipperary have played really well this last could of years and up in senior as well so they’re a really good side and we’ll have to be at our best on Sunday to go down to Tipperary and get a win.

“We’ve been down in Division Two for a couple of years, but promotion is a big thing. When you’re talking about a learning curve for a team, you want to be getting better, push on and play at the top level.

“We want to go up next year and it wouldn’t be easy but you’re playing against the seven best teams in the country, so we want to go up there and see where we’re at.”

Almost 200 miles separate Convoy and Clonmel so the Donegal girls will head south on Saturday night to give themselves the best preparation for such an important game.

“It’s not too bad for me because I live in Armagh but it’s a long journey, maybe a five-hour drive from Convoy down to Clonmel but we’re staying over, we’re going down Saturday afternoon.

“The games at one o’clock and then we’ll travel back up the road so it’s a long haul. The county board is very good to us because we definitely need to stay over.”

Daly is also expecting to have a full deck to pick from this weekend. “All the girls are going well, it’s as good as can be expected. We have a few girls who are getting back to full fitness and they’re going to be pressing the girls from the bench.

“We’ll have a full selection to pick from at the weekend and last year we wouldn’t have had that (a clean bill of health). Especially in the forward line, we have a lot of competition and five or six top forwards who are pushing for those top three roles.

“In round the middle eight, again we have girls who can come in and contribute and that’s always healthy to have good competition for places and it keeps the aggression in training up and it keeps everything going well for us.”