Jim McGuinness picked a fight with his own county board after Donegal’s dramatic All-Ireland SFC quarter-final win.
The Donegal boss was fuming that a statement was put out earlier in the week complaining about the fixture.
It was Donegal’s ninth game of the Championship, their fourth in June and their third in 13 days.
Donegal GAA said in a statement that they wanted a Sunday fixture for the quarter-final, instead of Saturday, noting how ‘no other county has played as many matches as Donegal’.
But McGuinness made a point of addressing his own county board when the regular post match interview had wrapped up.
McGuinness said: “The management and the players knew that once we got beaten by Tyrone, we were going to be facing into three games in three weeks and that that was the way it is.
“The statement was released by the county board, on the back I think of people in Donegal and clubs in Donegal not being happy.
“But as a management team, we were okay with the game. From my own point of view, you should never, ever make an excuse for a game before a game is played.
“I have never done that in my life and so I want to make sure that distance is there, because it’s disrespectful to Monaghan.
“If we got beaten today and the first-half followed through into the second-half, people would say, ‘Sure he was saying that during the week’.
“We had nothing to do with it. Nor did we know it was going to be put out into the ether until I read it myself on the phone.
“That’s very important to say from a management point of view and the players point of view – we were happy to be here today. We got beaten by Tyrone and it was always going to be that way.
“It was always going to be three games in three weekends, suck it up and let’s get on with it.”
It looked as if Monaghan might capitalise on Donegal’s fatigue when they led by 1-15 to 0-11 after a brilliant first-half – before caving in.
Monaghan manager Gabriel Bannigan said: “The things that we were doing brilliantly in the first-half, we just weren’t able to replicate them in the second-half.
“There were handling errors, there were poor options taken. We were getting shots blocked down, we kicked more wides. We didn’t seem to have the same hunger around the breaking ball. All of those things just went against us.
“We were trying to stem that tide and break the momentum that was with Donegal. We never managed to do that in the second-half.”
