KEVIN CASSIDY: It’s crunch time

AFTER all the group games, it’s now crunch time in the Donegal Senior Football Championship this weekend.

The race for the Dr Maguire Cup has now entered the quarter-final stages. By now you will know that I’m not a fan of how our championship is structured but, for the time being, it is what it is.

After a number of weeks of playing our group stages we now get to see the real championship action.

I’ll start with ourselves, Gaoth Dobhair, and we were handed the perfect revenge game when we were paired with Four Masters.

Four Masters beat our lads in the group stages. After the game, our lads were heavily criticised so it’s the perfect opportunity to put things right.

You will remember back at the start of the championship, I picked out Four Masters as a possible team to watch due to the amount of work that has gone into their underage coaching over the last number of years.

I think our lads should have too much for them but it will be a tight contest.

The tie of the round is undoubtedly the clash of St Eunan’s and Naomh Conaill. Both of these teams would be most people’s favourites to win the championship outright. The fact that they clash at the quarter-final stage is massive for the other clubs still involved.

For me, at the minute, the Glenties men are the form team in Donegal. They seem to be blowing teams away with ease and they will hope that it will continue this weekend.

From a St Eunan’s point of view, you will remember how disappointed I was with the performance against Gaoth Dobhair in the group stages where I said that I just could not see a way that they could win it given how they were playing.

I went to that game against Gaoth Dobhair excited to see how they were playing because a lot of people were talking about them, but their performance that day left a lot to be desired.

Against us, they played a very slow methodical style of football, and, to be honest with you, it doesn’t suit the players that they have.

If I was in the St Eunan’s dressing room this week, I would be telling them to go full on aggressive and try and hunt Glenties down because if they get into a game of tug-of-war I’m afraid that’s curtains for their season.

Glenties are far too experienced to lose one of those low scoring games, so the best approach for St Eunan’s this weekend is to throw the shackles off and have a real go at it.

Elsewhere, a Michael Murphy-driven Glenswilly lock horns with Dungloe and St Michael’s take on Kilcar.

Glenswilly seem to be moving well. With Murphy up front, they should have too much firepower for a young Dungloe side.

St Michael’s won all of their group games but they suffered a massive loss this week when Michael Langan headed off travelling so they will be up against it to turn over Kilcar.

Looking at the four games, I just can’t see where the upset is going to come from this weekend so I’ll go for Gaoth Dobhair, Glenties , Glenswilly and Kilcar to make the semi-finals.