Jim McGuinness is hoping the 'hurt' of last year's All-Ireland SFC quarter-final mauling by Mayo will spur Donegal to victory on Sunday.

Speaking on Celtic TV yesterday, the Donegal manager and Celtic FC employee revealed: "We are carrying a lot of hurt from last year.

"We were champions in 2012 and there were a lot of things that went on that we wouldn't have been happy about… a lot of circumstances that didn't give us the chance to prepare the team properly.

"They were rectified this year, but that (hurt) is still very fresh in the memory. The pain of being in that dressing-room in Croke Park last year when we got annihilated by Mayo. A lot of soul-searching had to be done over the winter months in terms of 2014 and thankfully the boys have really stepped up to the mark and given it everything in every training session this year.

"We find ourselves in the final and we really want to make the most of it. We want to do ourselves justice, do our county justice and we want to deliver that big performance."

McGuinness says last week's training camp at the exclusive Lough Erne Golf Resort in Fermanagh was all about fine-tuning preparations and getting ready for the challenge Kerry will present.

"There's a saying in psychology that fear lies in the unknown," he continued.

"What we try to do is make every known possibility that can happen on the day clear in the players' minds, and make sure that what we're trying to do with our own game plan, that they are very comfortable with that.

"It's just about delivering that. Our lads will not be thinking about the crowd or Croke Park or the significance of winning a third All-Ireland or anything like that. It's just about what we need to do to win the game and focus on that."

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