KEVIN CASSIDY: Moving on up

HUGE congratulations to the Glen club on reaching their first ever All-Ireland Senior Football final.

After the run they had over the last two seasons, they are fully deserving of their place in this year’s decider because they are on an upwards trajectory and improving with each passing game. Now they face the biggest game of their lives.

In last week’s piece, I spoke about how I thought the semi-final would pan out and it turned out to be exactly how the game unfolded.

Although I haven’t seen much of Maigh Cuilinn myself, I have a few friends based in Galway and they were filling me in on how they play and, in particular, just how well they’re set up.

They also deserve huge praise after turning in a fantastic year and an historic run for their club, and I’ve no doubt that they will be hanging around the Galway senior final for a number of years to come.

When they sit down in a number of weeks to analyse the game and to review their season, there is no doubt that they will be absolutely sick with themselves at the amount of possession they coughed up, particularly in the first half.

Glen turned them over in the middle third on numerous occasions and that gave them the platform to launch a number of their attacks and, indeed, punish them on the scoreboard.

On a few of those occasions, when Glen sit down to plan for the final and they rummage through that game, they will find some areas where they can improve, particularly on the opposition kick-outs.

They struggled at times, but by and large it was a very impressive display and it’s one that will give them confidence moving into the final.

A lot has been said and written about this Glen team over the last number of years given their unprecedented success at underage level, but they really do deserve tremendous credit for bringing that all the way to the senior table. They find themselves in the showpiece game of the year and now it’s all about taking that final step into immortality.

They face a hotly-fancied Kilmacud team in the decider and next week I will pick through the areas where I think the Dublin kingpins can be hurt and areas where I feel that Glen should go after.

After finishing this article, my son Fionn and I are making the trip to Ballybofey to watch Donegal take on Monaghan in the McKenna Cup.

This will be my first time seeing this new-look Donegal team in action so I’m interested to see how this set up and what style of play they bring to the table. Down beat us quite easily last weekend, but I feel for Paddy Carr at the minute.

With the Sigerson Cup in full flow and also the Donegal U-20 Championship, he has been robbed off a number of players that I’m sure he would like to see, but hopefully that will clear up soon and he will get a full deck of cards back.

I get the feeling that these first couple of months will be a testing time for not only Paddy Carr but for the rest of the Donegal GAA public. I think that we will have to be patient and allow this new crop of players to develop into something that could compete strongly on the inter-county stage.

We have always produced naturally gifted footballers here in Donegal so I’m sure if we allow the lads time and space to gel together we will once again develop a team that we can be proud of and stand behind summer after summer.

Tiocfaidh an samhradh agus fásfaidh an féar tiocfaidh an duilliúr glas ar bharr na gcraobh.