Jim McGuinness was left ruing an off-colour night for Donegal as Tyrone defeated his Ulster champions in Ballybofey.
On a patchy night under heavy rainfall at Sean MacCumhaill Park, Donegal were beaten 2-17 to 0-20 in their opening game of the All-Ireland group phase.
McGuinness left no ambiguity over his feelings on a hurtful loss to their derby rivals.
“We didn’t turn up at all,” the Glenties man said. “We didn’t play, that’s the bottom line. We didn’t play, for whatever reason, and we were still two points up with seven minutes left on the clock.”
“That’s not us. It’s not even remotely close to us. Everything was off. It will be a difficult review, I imagine.”
“With seven minutes to go, we were in a position to win the game and we should have won the game. We have to live with that and it’s all up for grabs now.”
A two-pointer by captain Patrick McBrearty had Donegal – for whom Michael Murphy and Michael Langan posted a combined 15 points – 0-20 to 2-12 ahead in a game they trailed for long spells, after Seanie O’Donnell sank two first-half goals for Tyrone.
Malachy O’Rourke’s side carved out a win as Peter Harte’s two-pointer helped seal the deal with Darren McCurry, Darragh Quinn and Cormac Quinn on target in a late Red Hands rally.
McGuinness said: “We couldn’t get our hands on the ball and when we did get our hands on the ball, we didn’t take care of the ball. That is it in a nutshell. We gave the ball away and we never got the ball back again and they kicked five points.”
“I don’t know, maybe the conditions played some level of a part but there were so many parts of our game that just weren’t where they needed to be. We didn’t manage the game well, decision making, where we were shooting from, energy levels, unforced errors, taking the ball into contact. There was just so many things, it’s hard to know where to start.”
“There are no excuses here whatsoever. Tyrone came in and had their plans. From our point of view, we just didn’t produce.”
McGuinness refused to point to a two-week break since their energy-sapping Ulster-final win over Armagh as having a bearing on the defeat – his first in Ballybofey in Championship or League as Donegal manager.
He said: “I don’t think so, I don’t think so. We had two weeks coming off the back of that Ulster final last year as well.”
“We came in here and we were bright and we were fresh and we were energised, we were Ulster champions. We’d just become Ulster champions back to back, it was the exact same scenario. We had trained well, we had recovered well after the Ulster final, we had trained well, there was a freshness in the training.”
“Obviously I don’t want to take away from what Tyrone are after doing. They’ve won the game, they’ve won the game fair and square and fair play to them. We’ll not be looking at Tyrone, we’ll be looking at ourselves.”
“Definitely we know where we’re at as a group and we know what the standards are and those standards weren’t met by ourselves tonight in terms of our own implementation of our own game plan. But fair play to Tyrone, they came in, they done the job and they got the points.”
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