'The best thing for me is that the intensity of our play never stopped' - Barry Ward

Donegal minor manager Barry Ward said he was delighted how his side were able to learn from their mistakes in their underwhelming win over Fermanagh two weeks ago to produce a superb 2-13 to 0-13 point win against Cavan at Breffni Park. 

The U-17 side have now booked their place in the Ulster League semi-final this weekend after landing two wins in-a-row in Ward’s first season in charge of the county minors.   

“Yeah, I’m very happy with what the boys did against Cavan,” said the Aodh Ruadh clubman. “We spoke after the Fermanagh game about what we had to address and work on, and really what we asked for the lads was 60 minutes of hard work and decent football, and we got that.  

“They never stopped playing against Cavan and as a manager, you would have to be very proud of them.” 

Goals from Tomas Carr and Conor McCahill in the first half proved to be the difference in Donegal’s six-point victory, but Ward pays particular attention to his player’s movement and support, something he feels they were lacking in the opening round against Fermanagh.  

“We really inter-changed well, that’s something we’ve been working on over the past few weeks against different teams who have different styles. Against Fermanagh last week, they opted to play a lot of men behind the ball, so we had to adapt to that and get moving on the ball. 

“I think we moved well against Cavan when we were in possession, we broke lines and opened them up a few times, we were probably unlucky on a few other occasions not to get a few more scores, but look, we’ll take what we got, and we’ll move on. 

“But also, we talk about our attack but towards the end of the match, we were still really tight at the back, I know Pauric Devine made a great block in the last few minutes which was crucial in stopping that Cavan attack.  

“We know we’re not going to go through a full match without being caught out at the back at least once, but we’re happy with the effort.” 

In terms of the team selection, Jordi Gribben was absent due to an illness with the remaining players who started against Fermanagh holding their starting jerseys. 

Ward claims this was for the lads to get a chance of proving themselves following their performance against Fermanagh. However, the manager praised the impact of his subs stating he has full faith in his entire panel. 

“Yeah, we had to slightly switch it up a bit in terms of the team,” said the Donegal boss. “Jordi Gribbin didn’t start because he said he didn’t feel too well, but he’ll be okay for the next day. But the positive from a team point of view is that we have 34 on the panel, and the lads that did make appearances played very well. 

“We have great faith in every one of these players and that shows, because lads played against Cavan who didn’t play against Fermanagh, so they’re all pushing each other for places which is great.  

“That’s what the league is about because we’re not going to have everyone fit every week unfortunately, so when a player does get a chance, we believe he can impact the team.  

“The biggest thing I’ll take out of this match is that the intensity of our play never stopped, even when the lads came on, you’d swear that we made no subs, it all worked very smoothly. 

“There was disappointment in our performance against Fermanagh, so we wanted the lads who started that game to go and prove themselves against Cavan, and we can see that they did that.”