McGuinness 'didn't agree' with county board's statement
Donegal boss Jim McGuinness has said that he "didn't agree" with Monday's statement issued by his county board criticising his side's six-day turnaround before their All-Ireland quarter-final against Monaghan at Croke Park on Saturday.In their statement earlier this week, Donegal's county board said that it was "most regrettable" and "very disappointing" that their request to play their All-Ireland quarter-final against their Ulster rivals on Sunday was denied.McGuinness' side ended up beating Monaghan 1-26 to 1-20 in Saturday's last-eight tie after a superb second half performance, but the manager said he was not consulted before the statement went out on Monday."I was unaware of the statement the county board was putting out, the first I saw of it was on my phone," he told BBC Sport NI."We knew where we were and what we had to do. The golden rule of coaching is you don't complain or gripe about something before the match, if we lost in the game in Roscommon there wouldn't have been a word about that situation. "I don't agree the statement should have gone out, there was a lot of focus on it. The county board have their job to do and I have my job. We were really busy trying to prepare for the game the county board were under a lot of pressure, there was a lot of people and clubs not happy with the turnaround and the welfare of the players," he continued. "We didn't want to be in any way disrespectful to Monaghan of making excuses before a game had happened."After a slow start in Croke Park against their Ulster rivals, Donegal fought back and took control in the second half to book their place in the last four of the All-Ireland series.McGuinness was pleased with their response in the second half after an honest half-time team talk."Nothing changed in the game plan, we had to find a different gear and dig deep. We met the challenge head on which I'm delighted with," he added."We're the first team there and we can go watch the other games over the course of the weekend, it's what we wanted to do."
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