The Alternative View: Donegal's NFL final fate still in own hands headed for Clones

“We’re not bothered either way. If we win the game we get there, if we don’t it just gives us an extra week to prepare for Down. We’re getting a lot out of the league and we want to keep that going”.

That was Jim McGuinness’s unfussed response when pressed on Donegal’s NFL final chances resting completely in their own hands ahead of the final round of action.

READ NEXT: Jim McGuinness admits adverse weather conditions taking a toll on Donegal training base in Convoy

Even when it’s right there on a plate, McGuinness simply refused to take a nibble. To be fair to the Donegal boss, he’s been consistent with all of that right throughout the Division 1 campaign so far.

The NFL top tier is a curious beast, top to bottom, and most seasons on the final day, there is usually still real scope for movement.

Right now, Kerry and Donegal remain in the driving seat to make the Croke Park decider with nine points each. The Kingdom’s defeat of Mayo, coupled with Roscommon’s win over Donegal, locks that pair on eight points.

And with those rivals set to clash this Sunday, the winner there will be hoping either McGuinness's or Jack O’Connor’s teams drop points elsewhere.

The Kingdom go to the AthleticsGrounds and that will be a real battle. Even though they are in a relegation scrap, the Orchard outfit are Ulster and All-Ireland contenders. They’d love nothing better than to take the Sam Maguire holders’ scalp.

The bother for that same pair and, if you were being cynical, even Donegal, is that McGuinness’ s team go away to a point-less Monaghan whose fate has already been sealed.

So all Connacht eyes and ears will no doubt be collectively trained on matters in Armagh. That is each’s best hope of gate-crashing the NFL Division 1 decider.

The issue for Donegal is that I genuinely wonder if they really want or need to be going head-to-head with Kerry right now.

But it’s going to be very hard to avoid that at this stage. If anyone else was lying in wait at Croke Park at the end of the month, I think McGuinness and Donegal would view an eighth league run-out as a useful exercise.

But a little like their clash in Ballyshannon earlier in the campaign, I don’t see what Donegal can gain or learn from another bout of shadow boxing.

Just five of Kerry’s All-Ireland final winning side, the XV that had ten points to spare on Donegal last July, started at Fr Tierney Park.

Donegal earned a four-point win but Jack O’Connor was in brilliant form after, which was a concern. I recall Paddy Carr’s Donegal, remember them?, seeing off Kerry in Ballybofey back in 2023 and the Kerry boss was simply fuming.

‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts’ and be extra wary of ‘Beeming Kerry men after a defeat’.

With David and Paudie Clifford not even travelling, the chief instigators of the painful All-Ireland final loss were conspicuous by their absence.

But cute Kerry. Tomás Kennedy, at full-forward, continually drifted outside the arc when the Kingdom were in possession to see if Brendan McCole stuck or twisted.

He wanted to see if Donegal would sit in a zonal shape or go man-to-man. Kerry wanted to learn something from a game they left home completely prepared to take a hit in.

This is a juncture now where Donegal, their players and management, as well as supporters, could get really paranoid.

Now, I’m not for one moment naive enough to believe that Jim McGuinness wouldn’t have anticipated all of that and maybe there was an off-the-cuffness or laissez-faire approach by the hosts that same afternoon also back in early February.

But the question remains now, in the lead-in to St Tiernach’s Park on Sunday, would Donegal rather fold their league tent that same evening and immediately go to ground until the start of the defence of their Ulster crown?

If that is indeed the case, the glaring issue is that it’s going to be very difficult now to avoid a final.

Again, I’m being mischievous here, but would Donegal much prefer to be headed anywhere else on Sunday?

There would be stealth attached to going to the Athletic Grounds or Castlebar, they are “loseable” games!

But if Donegal were to lose in Clones, it would look really suspicious. Again, this is just my own wandering paranoia but a lot of Donegal supporters will be wondering the exact same thing this week. What is best for Donegal in the here and now is probably the best way to phrase it.

To be fair to them, they went all out to get over the line in Roscommon in the second-half. But conditions were simply atrocious. It was a day to simply be endured and McGuinness wasn’t that despondent when speaking after.

And had they managed to bridge an eleven-point gap at Dr Hyde Park and see off the Rossies, we’d be sitting here now already looking towards a league final.

Also, it’s simply not in Jim McGuinness’s make-up to take a dive. He’s a winner and wants to win games.  And it’s also such a long way off from any potential Donegal Kerry meeting when it’ll really matter.

But it’s a very interesting rabbit hole to let yourself fall down. By that, I mean what would a league final clash between the top two sides in the country even look or feel like?

Would Kerry again leave their most potent weapons, or at least the obvious few, at home or in reserve?
All of this is speculative but I for one will be doing the unthinkable at the weekend, and I’ll be cheering for Armagh!

I don’t want to see Kerry until the chips are down and all the marbles are on the table.

The plusses to take from the weekend’s loss? Finnbarr Roarty was again simply fantastic while Hugh McFadden was excellent around the middle. Indeed, the team’s other totem poles, Michael Langan and Jason McGee, also continue to look the part.

It was a huge ask of Conor McCahill and Max Campbell in the first-half to make any kind of impression but, I have to say, I really like the look of McCahill and how he goes about his business.

The opportunities weren’t really there at the weekend, into the mouth of a gale-force wind. But he always looks for the posts first.

And if it’s not on, if more space has to be engineered, he has a trick or two up his sleeve like a dip of the shoulder, a dummy solo or a bounce fake. Shea Malone came into the action in the second period and banged three points, including a brilliant two-pointer.

But whatever plans were best laid in the team meeting back at the hotel on Saturday evening would have gone straight out the window on Sunday afternoon.

Conditions really were that bad with hailstone showers travelling completely sideways in the breeze.

It’s been an unusually wet opening quarter to the year, and that’s saying something. But the amount of rainfall is having a serious effect on pitches and their availability.

McGuinness says the side’s training base in Convoy is under real pressure right now and it’s interesting to see that Donegal’s U-20s had to open their championship account against Fermanagh at the Scarvey on Wednesday night.

“We’ve hardly trained and that’s being honest with you. The Donegal Centre of Excellence has basically been closed to most teams over the course of the last two weeks.

“We weren’t able to train there on Thursday night. We did a bit of ball handling in a corner as we didn’t want to further cut up the pitch.

“Conditions and the weather have both been really poor. Getting out on the pitch and doing what you normally do has become challenging”.

Roscommon scorers: Diarmuid Murtagh 1-5, tpf, 3f; Enda Smith 0-5, 2 tp; Conor Hand 1-1; Keith Doyle 0-3, tp; Colm Neary and Senan Lambe 0-2; Robert Heneghan 0-1

Donegal scorers: Jason McGee 0-4, tp; Shea Malone 0-3, tp; Conor O’Donnell 0-2; Michael Murphy 0-2, 1f; Michael Langan and Finnbarr Roarty 0-2, tp; Gavin Mulreany 0-1, 45; Conor McCahill, Eoghan Bán Gallagher, Peadar Mogan and Jamie Brennan 0-1.

Roscommon: Conor Carroll; Patrick Gavin, Niall Higgins, Colm Neary; Eoin Ward, Ronan Daly, Senan Lambe; Keith Doyle, Conor Ryan; Dylan Ruane, Enda Smith, Eoin McCormack; Diarmuid Murtagh, Daire Cregg, Robert Heneghan.

Subs: Shane Cunnane for Ryan (43), Ruaidhrí Fallon and Conor Hand for Neary and Cregg (49), Caelim Keogh for Fallon (59), Robbie Dolan for Heneghan (63)

Donegal: Gavin Mulreany; Eoghan Bán Gallagher, Brendan McCole, Stephen McMenamin; Ryan McHugh, Caolan McGonagle, Finnbarr Roarty; Hugh McFadden, Jason McGee; Peadar Mogan, Michael Langan, Max Campbell; Conor McCahill, Michael Murphy, Conor O’Donnell.

Subs: Shea Malone and Caolan McColgan for Campbell and McCahill (ht), Jamie Brennan for McHugh (57).

Referee: Brendan Griffin (Kerry)