DANIEL Guinness says his side are focused on delivering a 70-minute performance ahead of Sunday’s Ulster Senior Championship preliminary round against Donegal.
The Down half-forward insists the underdog tag matters little to him, he is confident his team has the ability to spring a surprise if they play to their strengths.
“We are ready for Donegal; we will obviously do our analysis on them and get our match-ups right and get our homework down. We all know what they can do but we think we have the pace and power to give them a lot of trouble too,” said Guinness.
"Playing for 70 minutes is the big thing, that’s what Paddy [Tally] has been preaching to us for a while - 'Can we put together one 70-minute performance?'
“We have had 15 or 20 minutes here or there and a good half here and there. You look at Cavan last year in the first half and even against Westmeath in the first half earlier this month, so we are playing in patches, and we want to build on that and nail down a full good 70 minutes.”
Down go into Sunday’s contest knowing that they may have already played in their most important game of the season.
The relegation play-off victory against Laois last week ensured Division Two football next against teams such as Meath, Derry, Cork and Galway which can only be good for Down’s progression.
Still Down are a traditional Championship team and although the second half collapse to Cavan cost them an Ulster final last season, they go into Sunday’s game with confidence after their back-to-back wins over Westmeath and Laois.
Guinness (22) feels if Down are to get any joy against Donegal, they will need to utilise the abundance of speed in the side.
Caolan Mooney, Liam Kerr and McGuinness possesses frightening pace and with Clonduff’s Barry O’Hagan and Mayobridge’s Cory Quinn in sharp scoring form, they can cause Donegal problems.
“It is a massive part of our game, pace and power to get through the tackles and through the lines I think we could cause most teams trouble with the amount of pace and legs that we have, and it is what we base our gameplan on,” Guinness said.
“We do plenty of that in training and we have players such as Cory [Quinn] and Barry [O’Hagan] who can shoot from anywhere and they have the accuracy, they’ll shoot someone’s lights out some day, so I am happy running it up to them.
Although he won’t say if he is the fastest.
“I don’t know if I can get away with that, Kevin McGuigan [performance coach] would probably call me out on that, I would like to see [Caolan] Mooney and [Liam] Kerr in a race,” Guinness laughed.
“We have done bleep tests, but we haven’t done a 100-metre sprint and I don’t know if I could keep up with those two.”
Guinness, along with his brother James, played a huge part in Carryduff’s run to the senior club championship final in Down last season and after the long lockdown, the finely-tuned athlete returned to the Down squad in top nick. A dentistry student at Queen’s University, he runs at the Mary Peter’s track and says he can’t wait to hear the roar from Pairc Esler on Sunday afternoon.
“The fans definitely made a huge difference and it sounded like there was more than 500 fans in ground against Laois, the atmosphere they bring, and it is good to have them back,” he said.
