O'Rourke: Rigid Donegal will continue regress unless they evolve

Donegal's style of play has been worked out by other teams and a failure to evolve has cost them the chance to challenge for silverware, according to Colm O’Rourke.

Manager Declan Bonner has led his county to Ulster senior titles in 2018 and 2019, but Donegal have yet to get past the Super 8s phase under his stewardship.

They suffered a shock provincial defeat to Cavan in 2020 and last year they were beaten by Tyrone in an Ulster semi-final.

Sunday's league defeat to Monaghan condemned the home side to a first Ballybofey defeat in a dozen years, with the introduction of the returning Michael Murphy unable to rally his team-mates to victory.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Allianz League Sunday, O’Rourke said he felt a few years ago that the Tir Chonaill men were best equipped to tackle Dublin with their strong, mobile and skillful footballers, but an inability to evolve and the lack of talent coming through has seen them fall down the pecking order.

"They are stuck in that system of running off the shoulder, short passing over and back across the pitch," he said. "They haven’t moved on from that while other teams have copped on to them and are able to take the necessary moves.

Colm O'Rourke on Donegal being stuck in a system that is holding them back, with he and Colm O'Rourke on the emerging trend of the 'fly goalie' #rtegaa #allianzleaguesunday pic.twitter.com/Un9xZO2Gui

"Donegal’s success was founded on Michael Murphy, Paddy McBrearty and Ryan McHugh. Three big men of the team. Murphy is injured a lot of the time and the other two have gone back a bit.

"Apart from Ciarán Thompson maybe, and Michael Langan, they haven’t replaced that sort of player.

"They really need now a boost from the younger players."