Jim McGuinness keen to manage Donegal players’ well-being

It all felt disarmingly fresh and new for

Donegal

in O’Moore Park on Sunday. Even their old was new, what with

Christy Toye

(league debut 2002) making his first start in a Donegal jersey for 681 days. Actually, old is a bit harsh – Toye only turns 31 next month – but the point stands. All was refreshment, all was renewal.

Their demolition of a Laois team that was rooted to the spot was the work of a team brimming with an energy that wasn’t on show at any point in 2013. The black card rules that make it an offence to check a runner going for a return pass is manna from heaven for their attack-en-mass game, especially when carried out with this sort of brio.

“It’s great to get the ball rolling again,” said an obviously pumped Mark McHugh afterwards. “We were itching all day to get back at it. A few of us were playing Sigerson games and once we had them out of the way, we knew that the whole team was gelling.

"I just think we're mad to get out on the football field again. You could see that every man was really focused to get out on the pitch and get playing. We've been training for the last month or so and while it's great craic, you just want to get out and play games again.

Game plan
"Part of our game plan would always be to keep the ball and against a strong breeze like that you don't want to be seeing your moves break down up the field and leave your defence wide open. So we did well, we moved the ball well in the first half and whatever scores were there we took them."

That they did. Enough of them, in fact to run out 13-point winners. Laois’s woes are food for another day’s thought but there’s little doubt Donegal have the raw materials to be challenging come August and September. As he conceded afterwards, Jim McGuinness’s job from now till then will be to get them all fit and keep them that way. “It can all change very quickly if we get a few injuries,” said McGuinness. “But we’re in a good position now in terms of the squad. We just need to manage it right from here on.”

Toye's return after two years of illness and injury is a huge boost. Karl Lacey and Frank McGlynn both came off in the second half with tightened muscles but McGuinness wasn't worried about them. We put it to him that this year's league requirements must be different to last, since he hadn't been overly annoyed at going down to Division Two in the final reckoning. "Well now," he corrected, "when Dublin kicked the last point in the last minute to relegate us, I wasn't overly happy either! But no, this year isn't a lot different to last year really.

"Our goals for the league are to bring the likes of Christy Toye on, to bring Neil Gallagher on, to bring David Walsh on. To move people forward who have missed a lot of football. They're real quality players who are very comfortable in championship football.

Squad depth
"So our job over the course of the league is to get them up to that level again. On top of that, it's a matter of bringing other lads on and adding depth to the squad. Because we just didn't have the depth last year, we didn't have the work done.

“The four rounds of the club championship meant we didn’t have them for that period and so we were losing players, picking up injuries all the time. It was almost a negative every time you came to training. We want to manage it this year and build towards the end of the league and hopefully by April, beginning of May, we’re in a strong position to push for the Ulster championship. That’s what the goal is.