Donegal manager Jim McGuinness praised his side for sticking to the plan and getting over the line to defeat Mayo in Dr Hyde Park.
The game was levelled by Fergal Boland with 15 seconds to go, a result that would have seen Donegal finish second and Mayo finish third in the group, with both advancing.
But McGuinness’ men pushed for a winner, and Ciaran Moore’s final score, which came after the hooter, knocked Mayo out, with Donegal still finishing second on head-to-head with Tyrone.
“Listen, we spoke in the hotel this morning about the fact that we were just going to go and we were going to play and we were going to try and win the game, and that’s what we did. They stuck to the plan, if you like, and that was very important.
“Ciarán had no context of what was happening, I suppose in terms of groups and anything else, but we said that we wanted to try and win this game.
“That was the number one thing because we had to try and win the game because we didn’t know what was going to happen in the other one, and we have another game next weekend, and we have to get ready for that now.
Michael Langan offloads for Donegal. Photo Evan Logan
“From our point of view, there’s a couple of phases here, and that’s the first hurdle if you like, and we’re delighted that in those clutch moments that we were able to hold our head and get over the line.”
It was a hectic game with many unforced errors at times and turnovers were frequent and McGuinness felt the intensity their opponents brought, along with his own side, added to the difficulty in keeping the ball.
“I would put that down to Donegal and Mayo. We’ve seen these games before. They’re always going to be that way, it’s very attritional, it’s very physical. They are very aggressive in terms of their man-to-man, they step very hard so there’s always going to be that moment. From our point of view, I felt that we managed the ball and controlled the ball really, really well for long periods.
“We got caught in a couple of tackles, but bar a couple of tackles, I thought that they really managed and controlled the game in terms of our build-up play and established attack and everything else. Mayo are a brilliant team and they’re a hard, hard, hard team to beat. It was always going to be like that.”
After going ahead in the first half, Donegal were pegged back from a David McBrien goal as Mayo led in the 55th minute.
But they responded well to that setback and soon hit the front again as Dáire Ó Baoill kicked a two pointer and Michael Murphy also scored.
“That was very, very important. It’s so important. The bottom line is every single day you go out, you’re going to be ahead, you’re going to be level, you’re going to be behind, and that’s going to be repeat, repeat, repeat.
“It’s just really important not to get too disappointed or down when you’re not leading. It’s also very important not to get too high whenever you’re doing well. That’s what we speak about a lot, and hopefully we can continue to do that in the coming weeks.”
