A puncher always has a chance.
It wasn’t a good year for Donegal in 2017. They went into the Tyrone Ulster semi-final with hopes of an ambush and they were brushed aside in an exercise that really separated them firmly from that top bracket.
Then they were trimmed by Galway and kicked out of the championship entirely but, still, they found some gems throughout.
Jason McGee is young but he put his hand up and looked the part for large spells in 2017. He’s only gotten bigger and wiser in the off-season and now he’s going to be joined by Nathan Mullins in midfield – freeing up Michael Murphy back into the forward line.
Mullins is a find and a half, coming from St. Vincent’s where he won Dublin club footballer of the year off the back of another senior championship success.
He’s an athletic midfielder who certainly isn’t skipping reps and qualifies for Donegal having grown up there and played for Carndonagh when he was younger when his legendary father Brian was working in Inishowen.
He’s already won man of the match in the McKenna Cup semi-final for the county and he’s already ready-made to come in and play county football.
What that does is it also frees up Odhrán MacNiallais who, as the old adage goes, is like a new signing for Donegal again having returned to the panel for 2018.
He’s mightily effective in midfield but even more impressive in the half forward line where he can still influence the middle third but split the posts and weave that wand of a left foot of his more often.
Add him to Ciarán Thompson, another success story of an otherwise unsuccessful year and you have serious potency. Brendan Devenney already claimed that Thompson had the best left foot in Ireland and, Jesus, we haven’t even gotten started on the McHughs.
Under the stewardship of Declan Bonner who has tasted glory at underage with Donegal teams, it is genuinely an exciting era again for the men from the north west who might just have come out at the other side of all those retirements last winter.
You can see again the makings of a serious outfit and, listen, whilst they’ll still need to shore up the backline, a puncher will have a chance in any fight.
Donegal can punch as hard as anyone now with how they’re shaping up and, on the latest GAA Hour, they were talked up as dark horses for the national league.
Wooly: I think Donegal will go well in the league. The talk out of Donegal is that they’re going to go more direct.
Steven McDonnell: I hope that they will go more direct, they’ve got the players. Paddy McBrearty and Michael Murphy, that’s what I would be playing inside and let players come in and play off them. Odhrán MacNiallais is back this year. They are going to be a threat this year.
Listen below from around 28 minutes.
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