A CLEAR run of games is yielding the best from Donegal’s young forward Conor O’Donnell who produced a man-of-the-match display against Tyrone last Saturday night.
The Cardonagh man hit a brilliant 1-3 from play as Declan Bonner’s men edged the All-Ireland champions to ease their relegation fears.
Bonner heaped praise on his two-footed forward and was delighted to see him back fit again after suffering an ACL injury.
O’Donnell was making a brilliant impression in Gary McDaid’s U20 squad before earning a call-up – but his senior career was derailed in July 2019 for the best part of a year due to injury.
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“I had Conor in about three years ago and it was very unfortunate that he did his ACL very early on,” Bonner explained
“It took him a while to get back. He came on the scene against Armagh in the League last year and kicked a couple of scores coming off the bench, vital scores, and he’s been excellent.”
O’Donnell palmed to Tyrone’s net on the cusp of half-time last weekend and struck three sensational points in the second half that sent the Red Hands reeling.
Bonner added: “It wasn’t going his way for long parts of the Tyrone game but he persevered and for 20-25 minutes he was absolutely top class.”
Self-effacing off the field, O’Donnell deflected the praise towards his experienced counterpart Patrick McBrearty.
“Paddy has been a class forward for Donegal since he became a senior footballer,” O’Donnell said. “He nearly attracts two or three men when he has the ball and makes space for others. He’s just a massive player for us and I love playing alongside him.
“We were a wee bit slow to get going against Tyrone and we tried to force it a bit too much, but in the second half I thought we were excellent in the way we controlled the ball and we took our goal-scoring and point-scoring opportunities.”
O’Donnell has started each of Donegal’s four League games and has amassed 1-9, all from play – 0-2 versus Kerry, 0-3 against Kildare, a point against Mayo and his 1-3 last Saturday night against Tyrone.
The 20-year-old, who is almost certain to be a regular in the Donegal line-up moving forward, hopes that their four-point win over the Red Hands will banish the memory of Killarney, where the Tir Chonaill men struggled badly against Jack O’Connor’s Kerry.
“We knew ourselves the Kerry performance wasn’t good enough by our standards and we had to go out and do better than that and I thought we definitely did.
“Tyrone are a fantastic team and are not All-Ireland champions for nothing. They’ve some fantastic players but we feel we can be as good as them.”
On his own impressive form, the north Donegal man said: “I’ve got a run of games this year and thankfully Declan and the boys have put me in there. I got a run in the McKenna Cup and played the last few League games, so I’m happy with the way things are going and hopefully I’m getting better every game.”
