Niamh McLaughlin turns her attention towards Ulster

Niamh McLaughlin says Donegal must pick themselves up following their exit from the TG4 All-Ireland Senior Ladies Football Championship and focus their efforts on regaining the Ulster title.

Donegal overcame Cavan on a 6-16 to 2-17 scoreline at Breffni Park in June before the competition was put on ice for the All-Ireland campaign to begin.

Having never won the provincial title before, Donegal were champions in 2015, 2-17, 2018 and 2019 before making the decision not to compete last year, with Armagh, this year’s final opponents, taking the crown.

“We’ll just have to get this one out of the system and then we’ll get the heads settled and regroup,” the Donegal captain said. “There’s silverware to be won and we’d like to win it having not competed last year. Armagh will be looking to retain it so we’ll be looking to take that off them.”

With the competitions separate entities, Maxi Curran’s team exited the All-Ireland series on bank holiday Monday when they went down to Dublin at the quarter-final stage in Carrick-on-Shannon.

Donegal made a dream start going 1-2 to 0-0 up inside of three minutes with Geraldine McLaughlin scoring all and might’ve been even further ahead by the sixth minute when Amy Boyle-Carr rattled the Dublin crossbar.

However, Dublin, who are chasing a fifth All-Ireland title in succession, got to grips with the situation and two Sarah Rowe goals either side of half-time set them on their way to 2-12 to 2-7 win.

“We’re bitterly disappointed,” McLaughlin added. “You go away expecting to win every game you play and we had the belief in ourselves that we could do that. We had no other thoughts in our minds that we weren’t going to win today. We have to regroup now and get ourselves ready for the Ulster final.”

Last year on Halloween night in Cavan, Donegal were five down at half-time against Dublin in the group stage of the All-Ireland competition and were making significant inroads in the second half.

However, an effort for a point by Sinead Aherne struck the upright high above the crossbar but somehow managed to come down and freakishly hop into the Donegal net giving Denise McElhinney in goal no chance. Dublin ran out 2-13 to 2-10 winners.

“Last year we started slow against Dublin and we couldn’t let that happen again this year,” McLaughlin added. “The goal and two two points we got was a good headstart for us, definitely.

“Dublin are very good at the press and we knew that was something they would bring. Before the ball is even in your hand there is contact there and they’re very good at pressuring you.

“That split-second you might get against other teams, Dublin don’t give you that. Fair dues to them. They’re very good at what they do and that’s why they’ve won the last four All-Irelands.

“We got about it well at the start of the first half but we couldn’t keep that level of consistency. In the second half when they were ahead we had a press and they were managing to get in behind as well. We had to go for it and that left space in behind.”