Donegal's sign-posted ambush will lack the required ammunition

Can an ambush still be called an ambush when you've been telling everyone about it for months? Hard to think so.

From soon after the draw was made, Jimmy McGuinness has been quite open about how much he wants to target an Ulster championship and how much this game against Derry, in particular, is the one game he is building for. For a man as famously protective of the secrets within his camp it was a surprising level of candour.

He is also a man that carries with him an aura of 'the special one’ and reputation as the greatest tactician the game has seen for at least a generation.

The credentials for this are sound. He took Donegal from quite literally nowhere to an All-Ireland winning tour de force in two years and fundamentally changed the game for over a decade. The strength of personality, of conviction he demonstrated as a young coach to take his team down a completely new path, to literally tear up the script and play a different game was incredible.

There is now an added mystique in him being a qualified pro-soccer coach and his dalliances in that game. To be honest, I don’t particularly buy that element of it but his position as a tactical genius in our game, whether you like the style he brought or not, is bang on.

It’s the key reason why this game is so interesting. Why this game, in this strange limbo part of the season we call the provincial championships, was sold out weeks in advance. Why a Division 2 versus Division 1 game is so highly anticipated. Jimmy McGuinness is back in the game, and back with one focus apparently, Derry, Celtic Park, 20 April, 2024.

Derry last year nailed their colours to the mast, All-Ireland contenders here we are. Announcing Mickey Harte only heightened the pressure.

Their response? As