Donegal not getting ahead of themselves as they aim to take down the Farney Army on Sunday

Donegal manager John McNulty is confident that his side can keep their hopes of promotion alive when they travel to face Monaghan this Sunday in round 4 of the league. 

Following their defeat to Kildare in O’Donnell Park three weeks ago, Donegal replied with a dominant 1-9 to 1-3 win over Westmeath and now sit in fourth position in the second division on six points behind Kildare, Tyrone and Tipperary. 

“Yeah, we know it’s going to be a difficult contest when we go to Monaghan, but it’s a result that we are really looking forward to, especially on the back of the Westmeath result,” the Donegal manager said. 

“We trained on Monday, we are training tonight and we’ll probably look at the opposition a little bit on Friday and that will lead us nicely into the match down in Monaghan.” 

While Monaghan has yet to put points on the board in the league, Donegal are taking nothing for granted this weekend with McNulty and his side aware that all league games are must-win events if they hope to get promoted to Division 1.  

“We know it’s a game where we have to strike a performance and win and if we settle ourselves early, I know the girls can do that and put in a good shift,” McNulty said. 

This comes from the back of a poor defeat to Kildare last month, but the Donegal manager takes only positives and learnings from that day. 

“The reality of the Kildare game was, it was a great game for us to play early in the season and take a lot of lessons from it. We got to see where we are at and where we needed to improve on,” said the former Kilcar native. 

“I think Kildare were on their 16th win on the bounce, or something like that. So, we knew that Kildare were on an upward trajectory and that they were going to be a really hard team to overcome. 

“They’re after coming out of the Intermediate championship last season as champions. They seem to have great chemistry and a great bond as we saw in the way they were playing that day in Letterkenny. They’re well seasoned and well coached. 

“Our objective now is to try and get to that level and match them. Now that can be hard when you have a young team. It takes a while to do that, but that’s what we’re building towards. It’s all about getting into a situation where we can compete with the likes of Kildare. 

“We’re putting a lot of work into trying to build a system for this team. To be fair, all that work is largely led by the players themselves. We know it’s not going to happen straight away. These things take time and there will always be mistakes, and we accept that and live with that. It’s about trying to get better with everything we do.” 

With all roads leading to Monaghan this Sunday for the ladies' team, McNulty informed Donegal Live of their injury situation, with Shauna McFadden expected to be missing for another few weeks following her injury against Kildare. 

“I think there’s at least another three weeks until Shauna is back in any capacity really. She has a dislocated bone in the elbow after the Kildare game which is a bad injury but she’s coming through it. 

We have a few other small injuries in players, nothing major thankfully, but hopefully in another month we will be back to full strength.”