HAVING crawled on their hands and knees to the end of the first lap in Ulster, Naomh Conaill stalwart Anthony Thompson is hoping to feed off the success of Gaoth Dobhair last year.
The men from Magheragallon became the first Donegal club since St Joseph’s in 1975 to win the senior provincial club title, but lost their titles after the Glenties got the better of them at the very death of an epic trilogy.
It only ended on Wednesday night past, and of the limited recovery time they had before facing Cavan champions Castlerahan on Sunday, they spent the first 36 hours celebrating in time-honoured fashion.
Now 33, the former Donegal wing-back was outstanding as he kicked three points in Kingspan Breffni, belying his years to pop up and land their final score after another 60 gruelling minutes.
“We’d three epic battles [with Gaoth Dobhair] and we were out for a night or two, which doesn’t help matters, but you have to celebrate it too.
“It’s a long year. Donegal was week after week after week, so it was a long time since we’d got out as such.
“The county’s so hard to win as we’ve seen the last couple of years. We had a good night and a good Thursday, then we started preparing Friday and Saturday.
“After such battles we had in Donegal and then you let your hair down for a couple of days, you’re not thinking about any kind of football. But we were back recovering on Friday to put in a shift today.
“Gaoth Dobhair set the stall out last year, they’d a massive year and won Ulster, and it gives the rest of the teams in Donegal the confidence that they can go on and do the same.”
One of the stars of Donegal’s All-Ireland success seven years ago, Thompson only retired from inter-county football at the end of last year.
He was still sticking the pace against a resurgent Castlerahan in the final quarter, as the Glenties saw a seven-point lead whittled down to two.
The exertions of the previous fortnight were showing on them but they kept throwing themselves on the ball and finding enough respite to get through it with victory.
Manager Martin Regan had referenced during the Donegal campaign how people had said that the Glenties were “a done team” two years ago, but they keep coming.
“I’d say if you looked back and checked the average age of our team, we’re not as old as some people are making us out,” smiled Thompson.
“Certain players have been there a long time but there’s a lot of young, fresh boys that are mad to go, and it’s those boys that are driving us boys on.
“We weren’t coming up here to make up the numbers today though, and you saw again today that the boys just don’t give up.
“They had us penned in at the end, we were under a bit of pressure and the legs were tired after the week we’d had, but the boys dug in and we got there. We kicked on the last score and now we’ve two weeks.”
