PwC GAA/GPA Player of the Month for May in football, Peadar Mogan of Donegal, with his award at his club Naomh Naille GAA in Mountcharles, Donegal. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile.
By John Harrington
Peadar Mogan says Donegal are very wary of the challenge that Louth will pose in Sunday’s All-Ireland SFC quarter-final.
The Ulster champions go into the match as favourites to advance to the last four, but Mogan knows that the Wee County pose a variety of threats they’ll have to find a way to counter.
“They're very athletic,” he says. “They have tonnes and tonnes of pace. They've got huge height around the middle of the field in Bevan Duffy and Tommy Durnin, huge, huge men.
“They've got one of the best inside-forwards in the country so they really are a top, top side. I think after Dublin they've scored the most goals in the championship. They're goal-hungry and we're going to have to be ready for that.
“First of all we'll have to match their energy because they're a huge energy team and they feed off that running game they have.
“They're riding the rest of the wave at the moment and the support for them will be phenomenal, especially after the result they had last week. They're going to be coming all guns blazing so we just have to be ready to match it.”
The direct form-line should ensure Donegal are in no way complacent coming into this game.
Louth beat a Cork team in the preliminary quarter-final that got the better of Donegal in the group phase of the All-Ireland SFC.
Peadar Mogan of Donegal during the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Round 1 match between Donegal and Tyrone at MacCumhaill Park in Ballybofey, Donegal. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile.
That was Donegal’s only defeat in 14 competitive matches between League and Championship this year, and Mogan hopes they’ve learned some valuable lessons from it.
“A lot of it I would say was down to some errors we made but you could say a lot of them were forced by Cork in a way because of their tenacious tackling of their forwards especially,” he says.
“There were good learnings for us in terms of some of the things we done and some of the errors we made. That's what a loss is for - for learning.
“That's why you watch video. Even if you win a game you'll still take learnings from it because you might have conceded a goal chance and you'll automatically think is there a way that we can stop this from happening again.
“It was probably good we took those learnings and it was brutal to watch back because of the way we conceded the goals. Hopefully it won't happen again.”
