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Donegal
boss disappointed for Down duo - 24/07/03 2003
All-Ireland Qualifer
Down
v Donegal 
@ 4.15 p.m. Clones, Sat 26th July 2003
Donegal football manager Brian McEniff has said that he feels sorry for Down's
two suspended players, Dan Gordan and Gregory McCartan, and insists that he would
rather play a Down team at full strength. “I'm very sorry
for both lads, to be honest with you, because I hate seeing teams short of players,
you always like to play teams at full tilt, including yourselves. But it's a panel
game now and unless you really have a big squad of players battling for places
then you're going nowhere. You also have suspensions and injuries and unavailability
of players for whatever reasons,” he said. McEniff also
went on to say that he would be watching the video of the drawn game against Tyrone
and not the replay because he feel's the drawn game gives a metter insight into
Down's true ability. “I'll be looking at the video of the drawn match because
you could draw no conclusions from the replay,” he insisted. “Down
just had one of those days that any team can have. Tyrone had the opposite, everything
they struck turned to gold. You could read nothing into that match. Down are a
lot better than they showed and I know they will have a sting in the tail on Saturday
to bring a lot of pride back into the squad. We could suffer a backlash. We had
to turn it around in six days to face Longford and we did that,” he said.
“Nothing went right for them in the replay, absolutely nothing. I can understand
why people might make us favourites now, but you go back to the drawn game and
Down led Tyrone potential All-Ireland champions, by nine points, with 14 men.
You just can't say they've become a bad team in a week and Down are not a bad
team, I know that and everyone in the province who knows anything about football
knows that. What I'll look at is to re-focus everyone's minds is the drawn match,
when Down performed extremely well,” McEniff stated. The
Donegal supremo also feels that you can read nothing into last years Ulster Championship
game between the two sides which Donegal won 3-12 to 1-6. “There've been a lot
of changes in the Down situation since then. Down beat Monaghan, who had beaten
Armagh. Then they beat Fermanagh with 14-men and led Tyrone by nine points. That's
more like the Down team that we'll be playing on Saturday, not the one that was
in Clones in the replay. It would be very foolish to read anything into that match.
They'll want to reverse last year's result,” he concluded.
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