By Dáire Bonnar

NAOMH Conaill star Odhran Doherty is hoping they can bounce back to form after a rare championship defeat as they travel to MacCumhaill’s this Saturday.

The Glenties side were beaten by St Eunan’s at home last weekend and that first championship defeat for 15 games has given them a more awkward route towards the quarter-final now.

Last year, the top four all got seven or more points which is now impossible for Martin Regan’s side, so they will have to rely on other teams to do them favours if they are to want a week off.

But Doherty had no complaints about their defeat on Sunday.

“St Eunan’s definitely outplayed us,” he said. “From our point of view, I don’t think we were up to our usual standards and it’s something we’ll have to knuckle down on because if we play like that again then we’ll have back-to-back losses.

“With the group stages it is probably hard to have that razor sharp focus all the time but I think it definitely puts it into perspective and from here on in it is all about getting the points on the board and try to get to the quarter-final stages.

“There are a lot of teams on four points already but there are a lot facing each other this weekend.

“If they end in draws then they’ll have a good chance of going into that final week of getting two points and getting through.”

It’ll be another challenging weekend for the Glenties side as they travel to an unbeaten MacCumhaill’s this Saturday.

The Twin Towns men were without star men in Oisin Gallen, Joel Bradley Walsh and Sean Martin as they put Killybegs to the sword at the weekend, but will be wanting to have a stronger squad when they take on the reigning champions.

“For us now we’re not worrying about the top four, it’s about getting over MacCumhaill’s and it’ll be a ding-dong battle, we lost to them in the league.”

Check out last weekend’s review show below…