Donnelly hails depth of the Tyrone squad

IT’S a squad game and Tyrone stalwart Mattie Donnelly says that was one of the defining characteristics of a hugely uplifting victory over Donegal at a rain-sodden Ballybofey on Saturday evening.

The Red Hands were able to absorb the injury-induced losses of Brian Kennedy and Padraig Hampsey en route to a memorable 2-17 to a 0-20 win, and Mattie Donnelly knows that it will continue to take a mammoth effort from the entire squad if they’re to build on what was a really stirring performance.

Speaking in the aftermath of Saturday’s win, Mattie said, “Brian and Padraig are massive players, two massive leaders. You’ve the current captain and former captain going off, that would be a big blow at the best of times, but we’ve a serious squad in Tyrone, a good squad of players.

“We’d full faith in the boys coming in and there’s even boys you didn’t see there who could have come in as well and done a job. We’ve a good squad and it’s going to take that because there’s going to be loads of twists and turns in this competition in the next few weeks and months.”

While Mattie has experience of previous championship wins over Donegal in Ballybofey (in 2018 and 2023), it’s not regarded as a graveyard for opposition teams for nothing so he was delighted to head back up the road with a win under their belts ahead of next weekend’s round two clash against Mayo.

“It’s a difficult place to go at the best of times, especially when they’re feeling good about themselves as well. They’re one of the top teams in the country – any day you get a win here is hard-earned, as it was today, so we’re happy with that.”

Tyrone’s victory was all-the-more pleasing as they showed the greater deal of composure and inspiration when the game was in the melting pot, in contrast to their recent Ulster Championship semi-final defeat to Armagh, where it was their opponents who landed the late, clutch scores on that occasion.

“It’s probably something we focused on after the Armagh game, and we have to be very happy with how we managed it here today,” commented Mattie.

The two-time All-Star says that their confidence wasn’t dented by that Armagh loss, but at the same time they’ll certainly take a great deal of heart from a well-deserved win over Ulster Champions Donegal.

“We’ll take confidence – we were confident anyway, the way we were going, the work that we’re doing, we’re confident in our ability and the squad.

“We probably needed to rack the wins, and we need to rack the wins in this competition, so yeah, today was a big win but a win is all it is because the next day out, you have to back it up.”