Jim McGuinness hits out at those 'hellbent on talking down' provincial championships

Donegal manager Jim McGuinness has criticised those "hellbent" on talking down the provincial championships, insisting that the Ulster championship remained "number one" for him.

The provincial championships' sacred place within the overall championship structure has come under sustained attack in recent years, with the latest changes to the competition format further undermining their centrality.

With the provincial champions now only offered a seeded spot in a 16-team round robin format, current Connacht and Leinster CEOs John Prenty and Michael Reynolds recently called for tweaks to be made to provide greater incentive for winning the province.

Ulster, however, has remained defiantly apart from the doom-laden narrative about the provincial championships' future and Jim McGuinness, speaking to former Donegal teammate Brendan Devenney on Highland Radio, lashed out at the consensus gathering elsewhere.

"There's a lot of people hellbent in the GAA in talking down the provincial championships, even though the provincial championship in Ulster, there is no change on it. It's still the exact same thing that it always was," the Donegal manager said.

"But people's perception of it, that people are not taking it seriously or people are focusing on the All-Ireland, it's absolute nonsense. A paper doesn't refuse ink, or conversations on podcast.

"The bottom line for us is that it will always be the number one competition. Whenever we're out of that competition, the next one will be the number one competition. There is two competitions every single year, in terms of championship football, and you focus on the first one first and the second one second.

"That is absolutely it. For us, everything from that very first training session to