Jim McGuinness happy to get points on the board early on

Jim McGuinness was glad to pick up two points as Donegal overcame Dublin in Croke Park in their Division 1 opener.

A 1-20 to 0-20 win was all that was in it at full-time, but a good performance from Donegal had them eight clear earlier in the game and they took their foot off the gas slightly as Dublin narrowed the deficit.

“It's good to get the points on the board I suppose,” McGuinness said after the game.

“Coming to Dublin and getting the points is what we wanted. We controlled the game really well in the first half.

“And you know, it was very difficult conditions and there was a really strong breeze there and we had to take the sting out of it in the first half and we did that really well and the goal made a big difference on the scoreboard at half-time.

“Dublin came at us very hard in the second half and they were much more direct running at us and overloaded on their own kickouts and we struggled to get our own big men to match for a ten minute period.

“But that’s always going to happen, whatever tactic is working at any given moment, somebody is going to counteract that and they were very direct on the kickout and the shot to score ratio I felt was very high.

“So that’s a couple of things that we’ll be looking at heading into next week but at the same time there were a lot of good performances.”

Donegal won their first three games of the Division 1 campaign last year and left them in a comfortable position, allowing McGuinness to make changes to the side and rest players ahead of the Ulster preliminary round.

And while there is a four week break between the league final and Donegal’s Ulster quarter-final with Down, McGuinness is happy to get the points sooner rather than later.

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“It’s good because once we get points on the board then we don’t have to take any risks with injuries so getting the points on the board is important, but had we not got the points we wouldn’t have panicked because we know what we want out of the league.

“We want to get everyone up to speed for the summer and develop the young players and give people opportunities. But coming away from the first game with two points, we’ll take that.

“At the end of the day, nothing's going to change in our own heads but we want to get out of the National League. We want to get depth, we want to get young players blooded if we can and we want to create as many opportunities for as many people. 

“That's the number one priority and so if we lose a couple of games, we're not going to fret it. The great thing about tonight is another four points might be enough, that's the positive going down the road tonight because it'll allow potentially more flexibility.

“We've six more games, so that's the way we're looking at it. We won't sweat that one, I don't think.”