THE phrase 'climb every mountain' will certainly apply to Declan Bonner’s ‘babes’ as they take on the juggernaut that is Ulster University in Mac Cumhaill Park on Sunday.
For the selection of an all-U21 side has raised some eyebrows in Tír Chonaill as this novel and somewhat controversial arrangement means Bonner will not even have a full strength U21 team.
According to county chairman Sean Dunnion, the involvement of so many of Rory Gallagher’s senior team with various colleges is the background to this decision not to field a senior team in the Dr McKenna Cup.
Bonner unveiled his weakened squad earlier this week and most of them played and lost against Sligo in the North West Cup. Bonner was without Kieran Gillespie, Caolan McGonigle, Cian Mulligan and Lorcan Connor, who is part of the UUJ squad.
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He will also be facing the combined Kilcar threat of Paddy McBrearty, Ryan McHugh and Eoin McHugh, who are vital cogs in Martin McHugh’s seasoned UUJ outfit. And to add to his woes, Stephen McBrearty, who came on as a sub against Sligo, is out for Sunday’s clash with a hamstring injury and Michael Carroll and Jason McGee are recovering from a bug.
“Stephen injured his hamstring, which will mean that he will be out for two or three weeks and that means he is gone for the rest of the month,’’ said Bonner.
“But we have an inexperienced squad for the McKenna Cup and could not have a tougher test than coming up against UUJ, who are coming down with top quality senior stars. Tuesday was the first time to get together and we needed this game ahead of the Dr McKenna Cup.
“The difficulty is that there are a lot more U21s involved in the senior team this year and those lads have all been training very hard. So there will be no problems in terms of conditioning, but the problem is when you don’t get the time to go through a gameplan on the training field, do video analysis and that makes it difficult. But we want to have around a squad of 30 for the first match against Tyrone on March 15.”
A hungry Sligo side got the better of Donegal, who faded in the final-quarter: “We made some changes at half-time, but missed four of five match-winning chances and fair play to Sligo as they took theirs and deserved to win,’’ Bonner added.
“Kevin McGettigan will be added to our squad and we have a few major matches. We would like to be competitive, but we know it is going to be very difficult. Stephen McBrearty’s absence is a big blow to us.”
On Sunday, Bonner’s boys come up against a UUJ side who, he says, have “anything from 15-20 inter county players and I mean top quality players": “We are really up against it and we will not really know where we are in terms of the squad until later this week,’’ he added.
“We have a weakened team and three big matches over the next 10-to-12 days.’’
And Bonner finds himself in the somewhat unique situation that much of his squad will be training with Rory Gallagher during the week and he may have their services at the weekend.
“Hopefully we can come to some agreement about that, but we will know more by the end of the month,” he said.
