O'Donnell glad of 'good result' as St Eunan's get the show on the road

Niall O’Donnell helped St Eunan’s to get the first step of what they hope will be the defence of their Donegal SFC title off to a competent start with a victory over St Naul’s in Letterkenny on Saturday evening.

O’Donnell kicked five points in the 1-14 to 0-7 victory over St Naul’s, who had given Rory Kavanagh’s side plenty to think about last year in the quarter-finals in St Eunan’s 2-12 to 2-5 victory in Ballybofey.

St Eunan’s were impressive in spells although O’Donnell was just glad to get something near a full team together after an All-County League where manager Kavanagh was experimental. A 0-8 to 0-4 half-time lead was added to in a pedestrian second half where the hosts ended up with a 10-point win in the end.

“It was a good result in the end for us,” O’Donnell said. “St Naul’s did what we expected them to do and they put up a very good fight there. For us it was a very stop-start game. Both teams struggled to get scores for spells and we wouldn’t have been overly happy with things at half-time.

“It was similar in ways to last year and in Stuart Johnston and Peadar Mogan they have very strong carriers of the ball. They showed that towards the end of the first and they are a very good team and getting in and under the breaks, which is something we tried to address even last year. The same thing happened.”

In 2020 St Eunan’s opened their SFC with a 0-15 to 1-5 win in Bundoran, before the sides met again in the quarter-final with Richard Thornton’s side running out winners on a landslide margin of 29 points - 8-11 to 0-6 at O’Donnell Park. However, last year back at Gaelic Park in Bundoran, St Eunan’s were glad to get away with a 0-14 to 1-7 win.

Bundoran, who are managed by Peter MacIntyre from Letterkenny, open their Donegal SFC with a derby at Aodh Ruadh this afternoon and St Eunan's are due at Gaelic Park this day week.

“We’ve Bundoran next week and it’s not an easy place to go,” O’Donnell added. “We always seem to struggle down there. We’ll see. We haven’t seen a lot of them but even ourselves, we haven’t really been together as a full team that much at all. This is the first game since maybe Glenswilly in the league [in June] and even then some of us were only coming back from the county. Bundoran will expect to have Jamie Brennan back next Sunday. He has the Boston final tonight."