Donegal skipper Rodgers eyes a winning conclusion to the league

GALWAY have been the only team to beat Donegal this season but captain Róisín Rodgers points to the game’s learnings.

A dig into the performance the simple mistakes hit between the eyes. Costly errors in a convincing home defeat.

Donegal have also drawn three of their games in an ultra-tight Division Two but they’re bidding to get back to winning was at home to Tipperary on Sunday in Lifford.

It’s the penultimate game with Cork coming to Donegal for the final weekend of the league and the Naomh Muire player hopes they can pick up points to climb from their mid-table spot.

Donegal are under the management of Armagh man James Daly, a former Fermanagh boss – among a host of ladies’ teams. He was also involved with the Armagh minor men’s team last season on their way to the All-Ireland final.

“It’s been good,” Rodgers said of their season to date, as they’ve also came to terms with losing many of their experienced players.

“We had those three draws but, obviously, we’d probably like to have a few more wins than draws, but it’s going well.”

The Galway defeat is the outlier, tucked in their list of results. They’ve had two weeks to come to terms with it before facing into Tipperary this weekend.

“It was definitely a tough game,” Rodgers admitted. “We knew going into the Galway game, they are a strong side, probably the strongest team we would have faced up until that point in the league.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be an easy challenge. Credit where credit’s due, Galway are a superb team and they were great on the day as well.”

Looking back over the video footage, it was time to learn. The mistakes were there to see. Loose passes. The Galway goals were preventable.

Rodgers took the positive side from it. Watching it back was excellent learning. It pointed out the areas for improvement.

“We know our season ahead is only going to get harder as the games are coming, so it’s definitely good to go up against a big challenging team like Galway,” she said.

“We would like to think we’d be able to make the score a little bit closer together (should the sides met again), but I suppose we’ll find out now, going into the games ahead, what we can really do.”

Named as captain, at the age of 23, points to her quality but also the level of turnaround in players. Many of the experienced heads who elevated the county to Division One football have moved on.

“Losing them was a big challenge,” Rodgers said. “They showed so much leadership on the field. With them not there anymore,it is definitely a big transition for us.

“With the younger girls coming in, we’ve a lot to learn but I am sure other teams are going through it as well.

“We’ll get there. As I said, there are a lot of different learnings to be taken out of it. The girls are putting in some serious work day in, day out in the training field and looking at the video. We’ve been tipping away, so hopefully now we’ll keep going now as the season goes on.”

Another factor is the competitive club scene with many teams coming to the fore. Termon have been top of the tree. Rodgers points to the progress of Dungloe and Downings going all the way to the All-Ireland junior final.

“I was down in Falcarragh recently, at Cloughaneely, and seeing the number of girls they had out training was just superb,” she added.

“It’s really, really nice to see that there’s definitely girls coming up. It’s really nice to see the younger girls putting in a massive shift and we will then see what they’re going to be like in a few years’ time.

“When we talk about transition periods, people are not going to be around forever. It’s really nice knowing that they have loads and loads of girls putting in the work behind the scenes. In years to come, they’ll be the girls rearing the jersey so it’s brilliant to see it.”

For now, the focus is on Tipperary and Cork over the coming weeks before the preparation window arrives ahead of the Ulster championship.

“The Tipperary game, it’s going to be tough” Rodgers said. “They have some serious footballers there as well

“We want to get scores on the board and try to get as high up on the table as we can. That’s goal that we have.

“It’s nice to know that we have home advantage on those sides so hopefully that’ll help us too.”