Oisin Gallen ruled out for Donegal in Ulster SFC clash with Armagh

Oisin Gallen will definitely miss Donegal's Ulster SFC quarter-final against Armagh at MacCumhaill Park this Sunday.

The MacCumhaill’s forward joins suspended duo Odhrán McFadden-Ferry and Neil McGee in missing the showdown after they were handed one-match bans for their part in a post-match melee in last month’s 1-14 to 1-13 Allianz League win in Letterkenny against Kieran McGeeney’s side.

“The only one I would say for definite is Oisin,” manager Declan Bonner said of those who would miss out this morning. “He has picked up a knock so he is going to be out for a number of weeks. He has a number of issues that just need clearing up. Again it is muscular and it needs time. It is frustrating for Oisin, it has been a frustrating couple of seasons for him with injuries. It is just a recurrence again and it needs to get sorted now.”

Ciaran Thompson missed the latter stages of the Allianz League through injury and a hand complaint curtailed the involvement of Coalan McGonagle since the clash with Kilare in February and Bonner said he was happy enough with their progress shown.

“That’s always a problem when you have players coming back on a very tight timeframe,” he said of the duo. “It is one thing getting them training fit, it is another thing getting them up to match fitness and that’s the balance to be achieved over the next period. We haven’t had an opportunity to give him game-time but they are back training so he is looking okay on the training ground.”

Bonner admitted there were inconsistencies in the league, although Donegal ended up in fourth place on seven points - the same as Sunday’s opponents - to stay away from the pitfalls of relegation. Some of the showings were criticised, although Bonner said his players and management team have no control over who says what.

He said: “We mixed the good and the bad. We started well against Mayo for example, very good in the first half. In the second, I know conditions were woeful, but it was the same for both teams. It ended up a draw. Having conceded late it was considered a poor result. We saw it as a point on the road, even though it was played in Markievicz Park.

“Mayo went on to have a very good league and made the final. Against Kildare, we won. We lost a couple of games in which we were poor, like Monaghan. We were poor in the first half against Tyrone and very good in the second to go on and win that game. We didn’t get the fluency we were looking for, for longer periods of the 70-plus minutes. You’re not going to get it against the top teams because they’re always going to have their periods of domination too. We need more consistency, playing for 70-plus minutes and that’s going to be key for us.

“[Criticism] is out of our control. The group of players and I know it’s easy for me to say, they don’t listen to it. I know it’s hard as there’s social media and it’s all over the place. It’s never mentioned. We just try and get one with the job and whatever people say, they’ll say what they want to say. We won’t get too bogged down on it.”