Jason McGee started the season with injury issues which disrupted his pre-season training, but the Cloughaneely man struggled on and got back on track.
By the time the National League came around he was feeling good in himself again. His rehab had gone well and he was piling up the minutes on the training field.
Donegal’s Jason McGee during Sunday’s game. Photo Evan Logan
It was the first time that McGee had taken such a long period of time out of football in his career. In his younger days he constantly spread his time out between soccer and GAA, often playing up to four or five games a week.
The break from playing through injury came as a bit of a shock to the system of McGee, he wasn’t used to not playing football on a weekly basis.
When he did make his return down in Killarney disaster struck almost immediately. After replacing Leo McLoone on the sixty-seventh minute McGee just lasted four minutes before taking a heavy impact from a fall on his hip.
This put McGee back out of action again and the towering midfielder would end up spending four months on the side-lines. During his second spell on the injury list McGee took the call from Gary McDaid asking him to join the U-20 panel.
With playing time looking limited due to the fact that he wouldn’t get to prove himself under Bonner, McGee made the decision to link up with the U-20s.
On Sunday he made his first appearance since the Kerry game, dominating the midfield battle along with Odhran McFadden Ferry and getting fifty vital minutes under his belt.
“We came into the game in the right manner, we didn’t under estimate Cavan from the start. Cavan have always been very good at this age group and there’s always a lot of talk about them.
“Every man was tuned in, we knew when we got up in the morning and we were all eating breakfast that everything seemed to be all right.
“It was a mature kind of performance from us, Cavan gave us a small scare early on. The first five minutes were always going to be tight and we knew they would come at us all guns blazing but we reacted very well to that.”
McGee said that he couldn’t fault the work-rate of his teammates and also admitted that he was delighted personally to get back on the field.
“The boys were busting it despite that warm heat and every time I looked around I had a man off my shoulder, they put in a serious shift.
“Maybe we took the foot off the gas a bit but we scored eight points in the last quarter so we were always seeing it out.
“It was good to be back, just trying to focus now on getting a full game under my belt. That’s the most I’ve played since January.”
After the victory McGee was quick to state that Cavan was no out of his mind and that all focus will now be put on the game ahead.
“We need to get back into it now in training, I think Derry were the second best team in Ireland at minor level last year.
“They gave us a tight game at this level two years back so we’ll need to come into it the same way we did against Cavan.”
“Gary and the team did a good job on how we needed to prepare for the Cavan game, they had everyone’s role down to a ‘T’ so we’ll look to have the same plans in place for Derry,” McGee concluded.
Tags: