Donegal minors will continue to experiment against Fermanagh

Luke Barertt brings his Donegal U-17s to Devenish on Saturday looking to make it two league wins from two in the Jim McGuigan Cup (throw-in, midday).

Donegal opened their season with a 0-12 to 0-10 win over Tyrone at the Convoy GAA Centre. And while it was a positive start to the campaign, Barrett says he’ll be reading little to nothing into last weekend’s result.

“It was good to get up and going,” he said. “But we’re under no illusions, Tyrone were missing probably five or six lads that will definitely be starting come championship. The reality is, at U-16 and minor level, Donegal haven’t defeated Tyrone in quite a while.

“So from a morale point of view, it was good to get over the line. But in the bigger picture, it counts for very little. That performance, as decent as it was the last day, won’t be anywhere near good enough to beat them come championship”.

Fermanagh weren’t in action first day out so it’s hard to gauge just where they’ll be at. Still, Donegal themselves are also still very much in experiment mode and Barrett will continue to tinker against the Erne cubs.

“We don’t really know that much about Fermanagh. We aren’t really doing that much opposition analysis during the league. Everyone is chopping and changing so it’s not as relevant as it usually is.

“The focus is on ourselves - getting our own house in order. That will be the approach on Saturday as well. We’ll look to get a performance from the lads and we’ll be happy with that, regardless of the result.

“We’ll make changes to the starting XV and we’ll change the makeup of our bench on the day. We’ll make as many subs as we can. We want to give lads an opportunity.

“The big incentive for us is that we want to show that if you train well and train consistently, they’ll get the opportunity to play.

“I think if the lads see that, feel it, they’ll come in the door motivated to push themselves on that little bit more. I think by doing that, you’re turning actions into words”.