IF there’d been a television camera present in St Tiernach’s Park on Sunday, the footage of Donegal’s two second half-goals would have been clickbait manna.
Odhran Mac Niallais would have received a touch of the adulation normally reserved for Diarmuid Connolly any time he plays a killer pass / kicks a score / solos the ball / plays a five-yard handpass.
His pass for Paddy McBrearty’s goal showed the difference between a McKenna Cup player and a championship player.
At times Mac Niallais can look like he’s strolling through games but then he produces that moment of absolute quality that you just can’t put a price on.
McBrearty had been moving left and right inside as he found himself in acres on the counter-attack, but the pass was delayed twice and the Kilcar man almost looked frustrated.
Then Mac Niallais took the ball and it was on again. McBrearty only had to show his body in the direction he wanted to run and the delivery was dropped five yards in front of his run, hopping beautifully into his chest to give him the turn on poor Pauric McGuirk.
Seven minutes later, Monaghan lost the ball on the Donegal 45’ and within moments it was in the back of the net again. It all came from another piece of Mac Niallais artistry, flicking the rolling ball up almost vertical, straight into the hands of an onrushing team-mate.
From there they had a 4-on-3 and they couldn’t have worked it any more perfectly. McBrearty carried until the first defender committed and then popped it for Marty O’Reilly.
He carried until the next tackler left Jamie Brennan to step forward and the pass was again dropped at the perfect second. The finish matched it.
It is January. Between the two teams there were only a handful of truly experienced players on the pitch. The pace of the game was out of keeping with the level of physical fitness either side would yet have acquired.
And even though they scored 4-17, the signs for Donegal were very definitely mixed. They will begin the National League without a handful of experienced players, most notably in defence. Frank McGlynn, Neil McGee and Michael Murphy will all miss at least the first three games.
If nothing else, that will make the early weeks a serious test of their belief in the new template. Their whole success in the Jim McGuinness era was predicated on defence first. Rory Gallagher was never able to mirror it and while he did bring the thing out of its shell a bit, there still wasn’t an outright commitment to attacking.
As Martin McElhinney said earlier this month, their humbling championship defeats by Tyrone and Galway last year led to a stinging loss of respect.
Declan Bonner has seen a lot of the young players grow first hand during his time in charge of the minor and under-21 teams in recent years and he believes that there is enough attacking quality in Donegal to change the emphasis.
A Tír Chonaill side with the talents of curtail Murphy, McBrearty, Mac Niallais, Ryan and Eoin McHugh, Marty O’Reilly and the fit-again Darrach O’Connor is capable of giving even the very best of defences a migraine, provided they are given licence to do so.
And in that case, the return of the classy Mac Niallais from a year’s travelling could make a massive difference. A regular goalscorer, this could be a year for his playmaking talents to really shine.
The Gaoth Dobhair man had been a frustrated figure in 2016, wanting to quit the panel before the end of the National League only to be talked around by Rory Gallagher.
Having always planned to take a year out, he did as promised and spent last year in New York. But speaking from the rooftop of his Queens apartment last July, he was in little doubt over where he saw his medium-term future.
“This time next year, ideally I see myself preparing for an All-Ireland quarter-final after winning an Ulster Championship with Donegal. We’ll have to see what happens.”
Probably the most out-of-character element on Sunday was the fact that both teams had three inside forwards right up the pitch at various times.
Instead of looking sideways for someone coming steaming at pace to break the line, he and his opposite number Conor McCarthy were always looking inside for the kick pass.
But after years of minding the house first and foremost, Donegal’s issue could ironically be at the other end.
The new generation are still physically light when you consider that they might have to mark a Paul Mannion or Andy Moran or Mattie Donnelly at the top grade.
Whether McGee, McGlynn and McGrath have the pace and energy of old to cope with man-to-man combat over 70 minutes in Croke Park leaves them in a sticky wicket.
The one sure thing is that what they had been doing wasn’t working any more.
