DONEGAL MANAGER JIM MCGUINNESS has become the latest GAA personality to have a pop at The Sunday Game, slamming the programme and its panellists for their negative response to his side’s victory over Armagh in the Ulster Championship opener four weeks ago.
The RTÉ highlights programme had been particularly scathing in their analysis of Donegal’s first-round win, rubbishing the match as a particularly poor game of football and awarding the man of the match to wing-forward Ryan Bradley on the basis that his performance was marginally better than the rest of the average displays.
In a post-match interview with RTÉ’s Darren Frehill following yesterday’s victory over Cavan, McGuinness took the opportunity to hit back at the analysts for what he felt was their disrespectful treatment of Bradley.
“There was a lot made of the Antrim game and we’ve been very, very disappointed with a lot of the comments that came out after the Antrim game,” he said.
“I suppose if somebody has an issue with the way Donegal play their football or an issue with the way Jim McGuinness sets his teams up, I don’t have a problem with that.
“We just felt that after the game, particularly in relation to the man of the match Ryan Bradley that night on the Sunday Game, that he was disrespected. They were saying that there was no man of the match, then they were giving man of the match to Ryan, then there was no man of the match.
If there’s an issue with how we play or how we set ourselves up or tactics, everyone’s got an opinion, there’s no problem there. But when it becomes personal and people are being run down, it’s my job [to defend them]. I’ve a duty of care to the players to look after them and we just weren’t happy that we were being disrespected.
Although he was highly critical of The Sunday Game in particular, McGuinness also said that this belittling of Donegal’s efforts was indicative of the county’s treatment by the media as a whole at present.
“I think Donegal at the minute with the media is a thing that you can poke fun at,” he said. ”You can eulogize about Kerry and then talk about Dublin, the perennial chokers – but Donegal, just poke fun at them.”
That’s not us and we’re not happy with that. But we have a job to do and we’re going to continue to do that job, regardless of what’s said, and it won’t affect the way we prepare for our next game.
Responding to McGuinness’s criticisms, RTÉ panellist Pat Spillane defended his opinion to Donegal’s win over Antrim but denied that any disrespect had been meant by the comments.
“I admire the fact that he’s standing up for the players, but I genuinely believe that he’s being a bit over-sensitive.
“The match was really really poor.
We certainly in no way meant to be disrespectful but what I did say was that Ryan Bradley was the best of a very average bunch. I said that why Ryan Bradley got the man of the match was because in the first half when Donegal were struggling, he took responsibility and kicked a couple of long range points.
