Donegal defender Ward glad of the test the McKenna Cup brings

With plenty of new faces featuring for Donegal in the Dr McKenna Cup down the years, Caolan Ward admits he’s a fan of the Ulster season-opening competition.

Declan Bonner introduced nine new faces in the opening round win over Down, to backbone his panel. The St Eunan’s defender believes the competition is a great gateway for the up-and-comers, having debuted himself in 2013 as part of Maxi Curran’s county under-21s who fulfilled the fixtures in the wake of Jim McGuinness’s All-Ireland success.

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“I love the McKenna Cup, to be honest,” Ward said in Portglenone on Saturday following a 0-15 to 1-9 win for Donegal over Antrim, which cemented their semi-final spot for Bonner’s side, where they will play Derry on Tuesday evening. “You’re playing quality opposition. It’s not the most important competition but it’s a trophy that’s out there and you can aim to win it and we’ve a semi-final now.

“It’s another competitive game and the last night we had lads making their debuts and that’s where I made mine as well. For a lot of boys it’s a great honour and we’d take a game over training any day.

“At this stage of the year it’s all about getting games and in terms of results, if you want to be getting out again you have to win the games. From our point of view we want to try to put together things we are working on in the training fields and bring it into the games. We’ve shown glimpses of it - obviously the two games that we’ve played haven’t been perfect but at the end of the day we got two wins, so we’re happy going into Tuesday night.”

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The Donegal captain came on in the latter stages to help his team over the line against Antrim in Portglenone

Following a memorable year with his club in 2021, where they lifted the Dr Maguire for the first time in seven years, Ward feels Donegal have a strong collective panel that are starting to get 2022 running.

“Antrim are well-organised and they made it very difficult for us and we might’ve played into that by running down blind alleys and taking the contact on a slippy enough pitch there. We kinda fed into them and gave them a bit of belief in their system and they put up a good showing, having beaten Down the last night.

“We came up the road knowing we were going to get a game and we did. All the boys are training together and the quality of training is pretty high. We’re working off a panel of maybe 40 players and everyone who is there is good enough to be there, so they’re getting their chances and doing well when they get it. The team that goes out the next day will definitely make itself competitive and we’ll be going to win the game.”