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06 Sept 2025
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06 Sept 2025
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Nathan Plumb, who was among the Rovers goalscorers, on the ball. Photo: Joe Boland (North West Newspix)
Stephen McConnell asked his Letterkenny Rovers side to show a ruthless edge - and got a razor sharp response.
Rovers inflicted a 7–0 defeat on Bonagee United at Leckview Park on Sunday.
Zach Gorman’s hat-trick was the headline act for Rovers, who also had Lee McMonagle, Adrian Delap Nathan Plumb and Gareth Doherty on target.
McConnell has made no bones about his target for the season: Winning Division 1 and earning a place in the 2024/25 Premier Division.
“I didn’t see that coming, but I felt confident,” Rovers boss McConnell told Donegal Live.
“We don’t look too far ahead. We just deal with today all the time. We want promoted and we want to win the League. We’re very lucky in terms of players and the boys seem to be enjoying it.”
With Conor Tourish, Chris Malseed, Ronan Curran, Ryan Lonergan and Blake Forkan on the absent list, Rovers still made light work of their derby foes.
With a 3-0 lead at half-time, Rovers pressed down in the second half to add four more goals.
McConnell said: “We had a few friendlies in pre-season where we took the feet off the gas after going a couple of goals up.
“We let them back into it, but we have drilled into them to set standards and to be ruthless. Bonagee came here last year and put five past our senior team so we know what they’re capable of. We showed that we were a wee bit fitter and we were ruthless.
“They caused us a few problems in the first half, but we put it to bed in the second.
“It was a big local derby and we knew what Bonagee were made of. We gave a good account of ourselves there. We were probably the fitter team there. Anytime they got the ball they could have scored, but we defended well and a clean sheet is as important as anything.”
Rovers have a reserve team operating in the Donegal Saturday League and McConnell has already felt the power of the collective.
He said: “The Saturday League team is a big benefit for us. We can get minutes into legs. The two teams train together and it works brilliantly.”
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