NAOMH Pádraig Uisce Chaoin will be able to call upon star men Kevin Lynch and Caolan McColgan for Saturday’s Ulster Junior Football Championship decider against Derry’s Craigbane, says manager Daniel McCauley.
The pair didn’t start their landslide semi-final victory over Collegeland, although McColgan did make a second half appearance, but McCauley suggest both players could come in from the start this weekend.
The Donegal champions defeated both Naomh Comhgall of Antrim and Armagh’s Collegeland to reach the showpiece. They’ll hope to become the third team from Donegal to win the Intermediate crown.
“Those two boys could have played today from the start, but I have that much confidence in the rest of the team that I knew we’d manage without them,” said McCauley after the game. “We took Caolan on, but that’s the way it is.
“It’s brilliant to get game time into Caolan and Caolan said to me he could have started if I wanted, but I wanted to hold him back because you always have in the back of your mind what if, what if we get over this match.
“It’s only a week, there’s a short turnaround. I just went out and shook his hand and he says he feels great, which is brilliant for us. It’s a bonus heading into next week, we know we can start next week like he’s good to go.”
While Naomh Pádraig Uisce Chaoin were impressive winners in the end, McCauley believes they still have stuff to work on, such as their efficiency in front of goals. They passed up a couple of goal chances that would have made for a much bigger margin of victory.
“He should have had goal,” added McCauley on McColgan’s impact off the bench. “We should have had a couple of goals. We missed three glorious goal chances.
“Through the Donegal Championship we were real goal getters, and I was really disappointed with those misses, they’d have made it a lot easier.”
The Derry-Donegal rivalry is one that has dominated much of the GAA scene this season, particularly at county level, and that will surely carry through to the club scene.
“They put on some savage shift,” said McCauley of Craigbane’s penalty victory over Drumhowan. “They were down 1-9 to 0-4 and that needs to be respected. That resilience is unreal and they’re shooting towards the end of that second half was brilliant.
“It’s going to be tough opposition. I have a friend involved in the club. There’s a fella in our club as well that has first cousins in the club. There are those connections everywhere which is good, we’ve got a rivalry now and we’re looking forward to it.”
On the build up to an Ulster final, McCauley continued. “The feeling is unbelievable. This is our second year, and we’ve changed the culture, and the boys have really bought into what I have asked of them.
“They’ve taken everything that we have said to them and we’re reaping the benefits of that now. They’re in serious shape, they played at a canter on Saturday, they were just playing about with the ball and this team knows nothing else.”