Jim McGuinness has insisted that Donegal's six-point victory over Dublin didn't surprise him.

The Ulster champions defied odds of 6/1 to dethrone the All-Ireland champions and speaking to RTE's Six-One News, the Donegal manager said: "It didn't surprise me. We prepared really well for the game.

"Before the game, we spoke about honesty and at half-time we spoke about honesty. And they delivered that without a shadow of a doubt. But they also married that with a very high level of game intelligence and they executed everything perfectly on the day.

"And we knew we had to do that to beat Dublin and I suppose with 10 or 15 minutes gone, it was hard to see how we were going to do that, but they dug in so well and I'm very proud of them."

McGuinness also praised his players for bouncing back so impressively from last year's All-Ireland SFC quarter-final drubbing at the hands of Mayo.

"To turn a 16-point defeat into an All-Ireland (final) the following year … it's a great testimony to them and to the work they've done over the winter," he continued.

"There were a couple of hard conversations had and couple of questions that needed to be answered, but they answered them today and gives us a position now where we contest the All-Ireland final."

Tweet

Most Read Stories