Donegal on Ulster trail after Celtic Park ambush

The football championship sparked to life in glorious sunshine last weekend, even if it wasn't always obvious from the press box in the Hyde.

Mayo's victory wouldn't have got any neutrals roused up and it felt fairly routine in the finish - even though it was nice revenge for last year. From our perspective anyway, you can never win that game by enough.

It was a different story in Ulster again. Jim McGuinness is back and the difference from this year to last is startling. It's night and day.

Donegal were clearly primed to exploit the gaps in Derry's make-up - specifically the gaps left on the goal-line - and when they did counter-attack, it was done at extreme speed.

Ryan McHugh is emblematic of their transformation, in that he didn't play last year for whatever reason. On Saturday evening, he was in sensational form and he and Daire Ó Baoill were pivotal figures in their whole gameplan coming up trumps.

They linked up for the first goal and were heavily involved in the brilliant counter which led to the penalty in the second half.

As was noted during the weekend, their kickout stats were nothing special. If you're going long, you have to accept that to some degree. But the rewards that arrived when they did gain possession were enormous.

When the kickout lands, their runners are flooding in. They've already committed. All it takes is one flick from a midfielder and their runners are onto the break, tearing into the space left behind.

It's far from a new tactic from them. I remember when we played them in the 2012 All-Ireland final. We were still a new-ish team - though there were still a handful of veterans from '04 and '06 - and we'd beaten Dublin in a tense semi-final.

Even then, that flick on in midfield into the path of a