Despite being seven points down to Monaghan at half-time in their All-Ireland quarter-final, Jim McGuinness didn’t make any changes at the break and the Donegal boss said it was about trusting the process and the plan in place.
And it worked a treat as from 1-15 to 0-11 down, they went on to win by 1-26 to 1-20 to make it through to the semi-finals of the competition.
Monaghan’s big lead at the break gave Donegal a mountain to climb, but the response was huge.
“We didn’t change anything to be honest because we had the work done and the plan going into the game done,” McGuinness said after the game.
“We just doubled down on that, and we didn’t change any personnel. We trusted the fellas to get it right themselves and it’s over to the players then.
“You have a moment, then when you say ‘we’re in a hole here’, and only the players can get you out of that so we’re very happy that they responded the way they did and I’m very happy with the bench as well, everyone that came on made a massive contribution.
“We trust our processes and that what we’re doing week in, week out is going to be stress tested and there is a different stress every single game. We’re into a semi-final now and I don’t know who we’ll be playing but there will be a different set of variables.
“Letting ourselves drift back to a seven-point deficit was a tough enough hole to be in but I would caveat that with the fact we’re playing against a team very hungry for twos.
“But once we were able to get that under control in the second half and they continued to look for twos but it was dropping short and that was a double edged sword because you’re not conceding twos and you’re scoring at the other end which is what we tried to do from the first minute.”
