Donegal must not let supporters down

Donegal manager Jim McGuinness challenged his players "not to let the supporters down" when they return to Ballybofey for their All-Ireland Senior Football Championship preliminary quarter-final this weekend.The Ulster champions will have home advantage against Lough after finishing second in their group. Ideally, Donegal would have preferred to have topped Group One and move straight into the quarter-finals, but their last-gasp one-point win over Mayo in Roscommon on Sunday was only good enough for second.That was due to their defeat at home by Tyrone in the opening round, meaning the Red Hands topped the group and will enjoy the week off due to the head-to-head tiebreaker as both finished with four points from their three games.McGuinness suffered his first loss as Donegal manager at MacCumhaill Park in league or championship in that game and he is keen to ensure the same doesn't happen this week."We're happy, it's one game, we have another one next Sunday and hopefully the Sunday after that," he said."We know what is coming down the line. We know if we want to be where we want to be, we had to win this weekend. We did that and we have another game coming."The fact that it's at home is brilliant. The last time we were at home we let our supporters down, so we're hoping to not do that this time around and put in as big a performance as we can."
It was a thrilling afternoon in Roscommon which culminated in Ciaran Moore's winning point after the hooter had sounded.Just seconds prior, Mayo thought they had snatched a draw and a lifeline to stay in the championship when Fergal Boland slung over an equaliser, but Donegal's will to win shone through, even though a draw would not have made any difference to their second-place finish in the group.McGuinness said he was unaware of that situation during the game and had not been paying attention to the updates from Enniskillen where Tyrone were beating Cavan, but insists all he and his players were concerned about was putting two wins back-to-back."Absolutely delighted - it always is a tough battle when you face Mayo," he reflected."We had to go to the wire and they did that very well. We had no ears or eyes on the other game, we were focussed on ourselves. We spoke about that in the hotel this morning: bring our own performance levels and we're delighted with that."They're playing games in training and there's a final phase called. They have to go do something in that final phase so Ciaran Moore, brilliant for him to step up and the way he went at Mayo's defence and mixed a score under serious pressure was a lot of class. "The squad is huge and you have to have everyone prepared to step in and do the right thing for the team in clutch moments."

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