I’m not playing by the rules
DONEGAL scored their first goal of the new season in Newry yesterday but Declan Bonner reckons they’ll be few and far between if the new rules aren’t scrapped.
Caolan Mcgonigle palmed the ball into the net after 62 minutes of Donegal’s easy win over Down which sets up a straight shoot-out with Cavan on Wednesday night for a Mckenna Cup semi-final place.
Bonner believes the restricted fist-pass rule is ruining goal chances insisting: “Eight or nine times good free-flowing moves were stopped because of it”.
The manager also revealed he isn’t even bothering to coach the Donegal players about the new hand pass rule – because he’s convinced they’ll be scrapped before the League starts.
Donegal were blown up four times for a fourth hand pass, but it didn’t worry the boss.
“We’ve actually done nothing about the fourth hand pass in training, we haven’t even mentioned it to be honest,” he claimed.
“I presume none of the coaches around the place are doing very little work on it because they can’t see it being used.”
Down boss Paddy Tally admitted some of his young players “got exposed” by Donegal, who lost Eoin Mchugh to a serious hamstring injury in the second half.
With the Gweedore contingent absent while Michael Murphy, Ryan Mchugh, Frank Mcglynn, Paddy Mcgrath and
Leo Mcloone are due back in a few weeks, this was a chance for younger players to shine.
Mcgonigle, Niall O’donnell and Conor Morrison did their chances no harm while Peadar Mogan, one of three Under 20s in the side, looked good too.
But it was 30-year-old Martin Mcelhinney (below) who shone with his support play and work ethic as well as 0-4 from play. Down too were depleted and the loss of experienced defender Benny Mcardle after just 12 minutes didn’t help either, but for new manager Paddy Tally this is just the start of a long road.
“I’ve been given the responsibility to rebuild the Down team and you’re going to have some bad days when you do that. “A lot of young players went out there and got exposed a bit but unless you put them out, how are you going to know?
“It’s been a valuable lesson that way.”