By John Harrington

Karl Lacey has heard the mutterings and knows the score.

GAA supporters have never been the sort to hide their emotions under a bushel whether they be joy, despair, or in the case of Donegal fans now, doubt. Their love for a team that has delivered the county three Ulster titles and one All-Ireland in five years will never diminish, but their faith in them to continue challenging for honours has wavered.

It’s the age profile of the team that has them worried. Sure, there are some very talented young players emerging, but many of the key leaders in the team are now in the twilight of their careers. Colm McFadden, Neil Gallagher, Rory Kavanagh, Eamon McGee, and Lacey himself are all in their thirties, while Frank McGlynn will join the club in a couple of months.

In an era when the average age of inter-county teams hovers around the mid-twenty mark that’s a lot of older heads, but Lacey isn’t worried by the Dad’s Army perception.

“Listen, we don't take it to heart too much,” he says. “As a player your focus is on yourself. I don't think lads read into it too much. We know ourselves at training every night that we're at the level. We'd hope to think anyway that we're at the level every other team is training at.

“A lot of younger lads in as well pushing every single player hard. Having that is massive. If you didn't have any young lads coming through then you might be thinking different. But having the likes of Odhran MacNiallais, Ryan McHugh, we've young Ciaran Gillespie in this year, Micheál Carroll, all these guys coming through pushing you. Having that makes in a lot easier, obviously.”

Lacey is now in his 13th season playing inter-county football and the demands have taken a toll on his body in recent times with a catalogue of hip, knee, and hamstring injuries. He’s 31 now and with a lot of miles on the clock, but he is adamant he is still feeling good about his game and physical conditioning.

"I'm happy. I've got through a good block of training there over the past four or five weeks. My body feels in good shape. I played a lot of club football as well over the past few weeks. I got that game-time and I was happy enough with where my last National League game was at.

"It's Rory's call. I'd hope to be involved on the 12th of June against Fermanagh. If not starting, then hopefully involved at some stage. The older you get, the harder it is but them young lads are pushing you hard in training every night. If you can keep up with them, then you feel you're in good enough shape.”

It never crossed his mind to call it a day after last year’s All-Ireland Quarter-Final defeat to Mayo, and he believes there were no retirements from the Donegal squad because all the veterans are convinced this team has a kick left in it.

“You wouldn't be doing it otherwise if you didn't feel we could get up to the highest level again,” he says. “The signs are there. Even last year, we put in a couple of big performances. Up in Armagh...it wasn't an easy place to go and we put in a big performance.

"Them signs...when you do play well, there's no reason why you can't go out and do it on a bigger stage again. We feel our training levels are very high. There's great intensity there, great quality of players there. I think going through and winning Ulster titles, and knowing that feeling of winning, it's very hard to step away from that knowing there's a possibility it could happen again, which we all believe.”

Many of the county’s supporters would have struggled to share that belief when they watched the team beaten by 10 points by Dublin in the Allianz National Football League Semi-Final this year. Donegal looked a long way off Dublin’s searing pace that day, but Lacey insists that defeat has not sown seeds of doubt in their dressing-room.

“No, it hasn't. Not a bit, no. We know ourselves that we weren't at the level. It would be different if you went in and played them and had given it absolutely everything, you trained really well going into it and were well prepared and felt really strong and felt really fit and then played them.

“Then you'd be looking at yourself saying, 'where do we go from here?' But knowing we weren't at our best, we weren't at our fittest. We know there's a lot more areas to improve, even tactically, we weren't fine tuned the way we should have been. That kind of keeps you going not to press the panic button. You just go back to the training ground and know you have to really knuckle down.

“We’re hoping that we've three tough games in Ulster. I don't think Dublin will get three tough games in Leinster. It's about what your goals are, when your goals are. Ours obviously are the 12th of June. I think Dublin are maybe thinking a wee bit further than that.

“Unfortunately for us we can't. We have to think about Fermanagh and Fermanagh only and that's the approach that, come the (league) semi-final, that's where our head space was. I think Dublin would be thinking further down the field.”

*** Karl Lacey helped launch the 2016 ‘Kit for Kids’ reward scheme. SuperValu, proud longstanding sponsor of the All-Ireland Football Championship, have awarded juvenile O’Neills kits worth €360,000 to over 400 clubs around the country.**