Donegal set to jet off for warm-weather pre-championship training camp
Senior football team boss Jim McGuinness addressed clubs at the first Donegal county board meeting of 2026 on Monday night in Convoy as he delivered his end-of-year report
A warm-weather training camp for Donegal ahead of the defence of their Ulster SFC has been rubberstamped by county committee.
Senior football team boss Jim McGuinness addressed clubs at the first Donegal county board meeting of 2026 on Monday night in Convoy as he delivered his end-of-year report.
He went over the side’s 2025 campaign, including the defence of their Ulster SFC crown and the subsequent All-Ireland final loss to Kerry.
McGuinness told club delegates that he met with each member of the 2025 squad individually and an extensive review of the defeat, and the manner of it, has been carried out.
Off the back of a successful Dr McKenna Cup campaign, McGuinness said his squad was now excited about getting the NFL season underway at Croke Park on Saturday evening.
The 2012 All-Ireland winning boss explained that 50 players were trialled in the close season with eight, in the end, being added to the senior squad.
The cost of the week-long Easter training camp in Portugal is to the tune of €40,000 with the squad scheduled to fly out on Good Friday, and county committee gave that a resounding thumbs up on Monday evening.
Meanwhile, looking ahead to his side’s exciting opener with Dublin at HQ at the weekend, McGuinness says it;s been hard to get a reading on Dublin in the lead-in to the NFL opener.
New boss Ger Brennan has used the O’Byrne Cup to look at those on the extreme fringes of his squad. So no one realy knows what quite to expect at the weekend.
Still, McGuinness reiterated that Donegal will be focusing on themselves primarily during the league with a clear set of objectives in place.
“We’re really looking forward to it,” McGuinness said after last weekend’s McKenna Cup final win over Monaghan.
“The younger lads, we’re looking to develop them and give them exposure to minutes at this level.
“Up until last week, Kieran Gallagher had never played a senior inter-county game. He’s now played three inside a week.
“But that’s how it’s going to be. We want to develop them, and to do that, they have to play and make mistakes to move along the process.
“But that’s the road we want to go down and to keep doing what we’ve done in the McKenna Cup.
“If we can create some depth ahead of summer and grab enough points in the league along the way, we’ll be happy”.