IT was the eternal debate towards the end of Michael Murphy’s career and that was if he should be spending more time on the edge of the square.
And to an extent, that was revived when Hugh McFadden positioned himself deep in Armagh territory and ended up hitting three points.
Old--timers sill get a bit misty-eyed about the big man on the edge of the square, but McFadden dismisses it as a “romantic opinion”.
“I think it was just the case of two or three balls being kicked in on the last day,” he said.
“There has been no big changes and, being genuine, I did not go out there with intentions of spending a lot of time on the edge of the square.
“I went on as a middle eight players and found myself on the end of two or three balls and I won’t get bogged down in it.
“The quality of ball going into me was very good, and Daire Ó Baoill is a very good kick-passer playing quality ball inside and that is something we might not have been very strong at over the past while.
“So if we can get better at that, it will be a big positive.”
On Sunday, Mayo come calling and McFadden admits that misfiring Donegal must win their last two games.
“We want to be in a position that we will be playing Roscommon with something to play for and, ideally, with them having something to play for as well,” he added.
“So two points is a must this weekend and we are acutely aware of that.
“We need to play consistently more throughout the 75 to 80 minutes.
“I think there has been a constant rate of improvement through the last two games.
“But it is wins that count and improvement alone does not get you points.
“I think if we can replicate spells of the games we have played already against Galway and Armagh, I think if we can increase that from 50-60 minutes, it will give us a much better chance of victory over Mayo.
“And that lack of consistency has been the big thing that has let us down in the last two games.”
But accuracy has also badly let them down.
“We have not scored enough, especially against Galway as we left a lot of scores behind us and our attacking play against Armagh was just not up to the standard at all,” McFadden said.
“We have looked at that over the past two weeks and it is something we need to improve on, not just this weekend, but for the summer in general.”
And while victory over Mayo is a must, McFadden is all too aware of McStay’s team’s frenetic resilience.
“One of the great things about Mayo is that they are never beaten and their ability to fight, claw and scrap for everything is really admirable,” he said.
“Unfortunately, we were on the wrong end of that in our last two League outings with them, where we were in positions that we probably should have won the game but did not. They never give up”.
McFadden declines to speculate on Mayo’s attitude to Sunday’s game, with the Connacht side sitting top of the standings with eight points from five unbeaten games
“We are not thinking like that,” he said.
“We are not reading too much into their psyche.
“We know that they are a very good team.
“They have used a lot of players and they seem to be developing a nice panel which will be good for them given the nature of the structure of the Championship.
“We know that they will be coming to Ballybofey to win for their own reasons, and we will have to bring our game to them and not worry about how they are feeling or what their schedule is.”
