‘I wasn't happy' – Jim McGuinness explains what prompted touchline row with Cavan boss Galligan after being ‘blanked'

The Irish Sun

2 days ago

JIM McGUINNESS detailed the source for his touchline dust-up with Cavan counterpart Raymond Galligan was being "blanked" by the officials beforehand.
The Ulster champions eased past their provincial foes
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McGuiness' side eased to victory at Breffni Park by 3-26 to 1-13
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Cavan's former goalkeeper-turned-manager and McGuinness were both shown yellow cards over the flare-up
But it wasn't all plain sailing for McGuinness as on the cusp of half-time he was shown a yellow card for his part in a heated row with Cavan boss Galligan.
In that instance McGuinness' complaint centred on Breffni ace Dara McVeety supposedly going down with a phoney injury in the hope that play would be stopped whilst Donegal were on the counter.
Galligan took issue with that insinuation which led to both men turning on each other.
Post-match, the 2012 All-Ireland winner was asked by RTE's Darren Frehill to detail what exactly had gone on between them.
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His answer conveyed his anger hadn't subsided a great deal as he sarcastically fired back: "How long have you got Darren?!! We weren't happy with some of the things that were going on, on the pitch.
"We had two transitional moments and both of them were stopped for head injuries, so we were getting annoyed with that.
"We had [referee] Sean Hurson on the sideline in the second-half and you can have a really good conversation with him.
"In the first half we weren't happy with a lot of the things that were going on and we were bringing it to attention, but we were being blanked.
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"So sometimes you have to deal with it yourself and that's what we did. This is football and these things do happen.
"My duty of care is to my players and if I feel my players are being taken advantage of in any way or not getting a fair shake in any way, then it's up to me to do something about it and deal with that. That's what I did."
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Donegal
That is provided they beat Mayo and the Red Hands fail to defeat Cavan.
And they can take positives from their win over the hosts at Kingspan Breffni Park. McGuinness believes their finish to the first half was the winning of the game.
An unanswered 1-4 — with a goal from Finbarr Roarty — set the tone and gave them a seven-point lead before they ran riot in the second half.
But the Naomh Conaill clubman emphasized: 'These games are never over anyway.' Donegal led 1-12 to 1-5 at the interval.
And they added further goals in the second period from Inishowen pair Conor O'Donnell — who scored 1-4 — and Caolan McColgan.
Their talisman Michael Murphy was taken off midway through the second half and earned a standing ovation having scored seven points.
Shane O'Donnell was named man of the match. McGuinness added: 'You know, it petered out there. That was very unusual considering Cavan had the wind during the second half.
'We were expecting that the battle that started in the first half would continue on into the second half longer.
'But they did very well to get the goal just on the stroke of half time.
That settled everybody and allowed us to play the football that we want to play.
'There was lots of running in them in the second half. We made good decisions, people stretched the game and we got a lot of scores on the board.'
ALL TO PLAY FOR
Donegal had been beaten 2-17 to 0-20 by Tyrone in their opening encounter. But now every side has won one and lost one game each.
And that means all four sides have a shot at progression in a fortnight in the group finale.
McGuinness — who was delighted with how his side have improved from their opening day loss — added: 'There was a very tough battle there for a long time.
'But, you know, they responded really well to everything that was fired at them.
'We found that rhythm that we were looking for last week that was not there. We had too many unforced errors and we, you know, made some bad decisions.
'We are very happy, first and foremost, to get points on the board. It was a very, very important game for us from that point of view.
'Everybody's on two points now. And we'll see how it goes for us in the next game.'