Dermot Malone will never forget his first championship start for Monaghan.

It came in yesterday's long-awaited Ulster final victory over Donegal, and the young Castleblayney Faughs clubman was outstanding in negating the All-Ireland champions' famous counterattacks.

"I had a few cameo roles before, but this is just fantastic to start in an Ulster final and to play a real part," he enthused in the Irish News.

"But we were really up for this match. We had a team meeting on Saturday and coming out of the dressing-room, Padraig Donaghy just said to me that he would just die in this jersey. And I think that was every man's attitude out there today.

"We had a great start and we managed to hold Donegal scoreless for 30 minutes and we managed to keep it tight at the back.

"We had some bad starts earlier in the year and were determined that this would not happen in the Ulster final. And we got the scores that we needed and that stood to us at the end of the day." Tweet

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