Football

Lorcan Connor wary of hype over Donegal U21 displays

IT wouldn’t be a deep trawl through their history that’s needed for Donegal to find a heavy favourites tag that blew up in their faces.

Lorcan Connor was a year old for it, and was an interested spectator with his Ulster minor medal from the year previous secured, but he remembers it well.

Indeed, seven of his under-21 team-mates that started in last Wednesday night’s thumping semi-final win over Cavan were on the field at St Tiernach’s Park when their dreams went up in smoke.

They came in as overwhelming favourites for the provincial minor semi-final but a well-organised Oak Leaf outfit stunned them with a one-point win.

Just as then, there will be no back door for the losers to fall back through from the last ever Ulster under-21 final, and the Downings forward is not buying any of the engorged praise that has come their way.

“I definitely don’t think you could label us as the best team to come through at this age group, that’s a far out thing to be saying to be honest. We’ve won nothing yet.

“We just about got over Tyrone, we were very lucky they didn’t beat us. If Tyrone had scored a point with the last kick of the game instead of going for a goal they would have beat us.

“We’ve put the head down since then. We didn’t have a great first half against Tyrone the second day but we got over the line in the second half. Against Cavan, a few things went our way early on that didn’t go their way.

“Especially after that [2015 minor loss], you’d never look too much about what people are saying about you. I don’t know how so many people think they can write off Derry at the minute.

“They’ve been through a lot, they have Ulster titles. You look at the Slaughtneil boys, they were in an All-Ireland final; the Watty Graham’s boys have four Ulster minor titles in a row; St Pat’s Maghera have Hogan Cups.

“They won Ulster minor the year after us in 2015. I know we’ve put up a few big scores but Derry have been tottering along on their own and there’s nobody in our camp writing them off.”

It was much harder to play down the performance against the Breffnimen. From their first 15 shots, they scored 1-14. In all, they racked up 3-17 to win by double scores.

They looked like a team that knew each other inside out and given the exposure they’ve had to games together this season, it is little surprise.

The decision to have them play as a unit in the McKenna Cup might not have been universally popular but it certainly seems to have done them no harm.

“I don’t know if it would be an advantage,” says the Donegal free-taker.

“They’ve a few boys that have come back in now with a few championship games under their belt and that’s kind of all you need.

“We have a lot of boys up with the seniors but likewise with Derry, they’ve 13 or 14 up with the seniors as well, so they’ve been training collectively since when their seniors started.

“It’s the same collective we have, so I wouldn’t pinpoint that as an advantage for us.”