Donegal manager Maxi Curran was particularly pleased for his young players after they claimed the Ulster senior title on teh back of the tough league campaign they had to endure earlier this year.
Curran’s charges ended Armagh’s hopes of a four in-a-row with a 1-10 to 0-9 win at Owenbeg at the weekend, with 20-year-old substitute Ciara McGarvey socring the goal right at the end to clinch their first provincial crown since 2019.
While having the experience of captain Niamh McLaughlin, Nicole McLaughlin, Emer Gallagher, Katy Herron and Karen Guthrie was vital, as well as the returning Niamh Hegarty and Tanya Kennedy, it was the contribution of the young players like Amy Boyle Carr, who scored two fantastic points, Katie Long, who also scored a point in each half and 17-year-olds Katie Dowds and Abigail Temple Asoko, who lit up the stage.
“Right through from [goalkeeper] Claire Friel, who never played for Donegal before the second last round of the National League, to our full-back Abigail [Temple Asoko], 17 years of age, player of the match in a minor final last week, to come out and play like that, to have the confidence and belief and ability to step out and cleanly win the ball from a full-forward of Kelly Mallon’s ability is just a huge testament to the kind of future she has,” said Curran.
“Katie Dowds kicked a fabulous point – she is 17 years of age and then you go through to Karen [Guthrie] and Niamh [Hegarty] at the other end of the field.
“To have that big an age range and that big of a gap and produce a huge display on the day I’m really happy for them.”
“The girls have put in a huge amount of effort from November. It’s a big relief and it has been tough for young county girls to start their county career in such a demoralising way of losing every game.
“To come into a team they would have expected to be flying high and to face seven straight defeats and then lose to Armagh at home was tough for them – it hasn’t been easy. We are just immensely proud.”
While many had written off Donegal coming into the final, Curran felt his side were not far away and the familiarity of playing Armagh had its advantages.
“We never felt that winning was beyond us in any shape or form. We have been playing our football in Division One, in my time, for the last six or seven years,” said Curran.
“We’ve been in All-Ireland semi-finals, made the National League final and there have always been very good players on that Donegal team and I think that had been forgotten about, very conveniently.
“The winning or losing matches is a very small margin and when you get to a final on a one-off day against a very familiar foe like Armagh are to us and we are to Armagh anything can happen.
“A few tweaks from the last day – we felt that eight points was a big score line but it wasn’t an eight-point game. We were able to add the likes of Niamh Hegarty and Tanya Kennedy, which obviously really helped things. All things added up for us in the end and got us over the line.”
“We’ve won one game all year prior to this and that was against Cavan and people were really writing you off and saying this was the end of it but we always felt that we were close and we had very little luck in the campaign up to now.
“We’ve learned a lot from playing Armagh over the last couple of years. The threat that Aimee [Mackin] carries is the main thing. We looked at the matches we lost in the league and we focused on correcting the mistakes and the contributing factors that made us lose the game.”
