Martin Regan content with Naomh Conaill’s fightback against St Eunan's

Martin Regan says his Naomh Conaill side showed their worth with a battling second-half display which pegged back a six-point gap as the SFC points were shared with St Eunan’s. 

In a prickly contest, it always is with this warring pair, it was the Letterkenny men that stormed into a 0-7 to 0-2 lead at the changeover. 

Things got even better for the visitors when Conor O’Donnell Jnr lamped over a free on the resumption to widen the deficit further.

But in front of the watching Jim McGuinness, Regan’s charges were much improved from that point on. And three minutes into the red the salvage operation was complete as Ethan O’Donnell struck a deserved equaliser.   

“Where we were at half-time, we’d have taken the draw,” said Regan after. “Nothing had gone right for us at that stage. We were pleased in the end to get something out of the game”.

Pressed on what changed after the break, where the improvement came from, he explained: “We needed to turn it into a battle and thankfully we came out the right side of things in the second half. There was always going to be a point in it or a drawn game. There is never much in it. 

“It didn’t look like it at the break but it came down to the wire”. 

Naomh Conaill, the defending champions, recently downed Rory Kavanagh’s men in the All-County League Division 1 decider. There was little to no bite that day.

However, Sunday was much different. Before, during and even after, both sides were getting involved with each other. And if and when their paths do cross again in this term’s Dr Maguire race, you can be sure it’ll again have a real edge.  

“Championship is a step up. There was a trophy at stake a few weeks ago but there wasn’t a huge emphasis put on the league. And when it gets down to the latter stages it’ll step up again. That was obvious there today”.