Donegal advance to the Pat O'Brien cup final.

Donegal squeezed past Cork in a closely contested cup semi final at Canton on Sunday. In what proved to be a game of two halves, Donegal impressed in the opening half with Cork putting up a tremendous fight back in the second half. Early exchanges were evenly contested but Donegal’s dominance grew towards the later stages of the first half.

The highlight of the first half saw Kieran McGee advancing from half back to collect a cross field pass that he made no mistake in putting over the bar. Points followed from Curran, McNulty and Roper, Donegal went in at the break with a 0:09 to 0:04 lead. Cork gained the upper hand in the second half and quickly ate away at Donegal’s lead.

A missed goal chance for Cork meant that they didn’t take a lead over Donegal. Letterkenny native Dualtach Molloy put Donegal back into the lead only for Cork to again level the scores. As the minutes ticked away, it looked like this game was heading for a draw until Kieran Mulvihil managed to score the winning point from a tight angle.

Final Score Donegal 0:13 Cork 0:12 Donegal now advance to play Wolfetones in the final scheduled for 2:30 on Sunday May 18th. The Donegal management will be hoping for a better performance against a Tones team that defeated Aidan MacAnespies in the other semi final game. This should be an intriguing contest as both teams are due to meet in their opening championship game the following week.

Donegal team C Murphy, G McDermott, S Lee, R Diver, P Collins, R MacNiallais, D McNulty, D Harkin, P Roper, K Curran, D Molloy, K Mulvihill