Jim McGuinness may have good reason to grumble about fixture congestion and player welfare ahead of Saturday's All-Ireland quarter-final against Monaghan, however, former Tyrone star Seán Cavanagh feels that Donegal do not have too much cause for concern.
In fact, Cavanagh can only see positives from the extended run of competitive fixtures that Donegal have played since taking the field against Derry in the preliminary round of the Ulster championship back in April.
Since then, Donegal went on to beat Monaghan and Down, before overcoming Armagh in the provincial decider, and then McGuinness’ unit were matched alongside Tyrone, Mayo and Cavan in the round robin phase, before defeating Louth in the preliminary quarter-finals on Sunday.
And so Donegal are straight back into the action, in the first of this weekend’s quarter-finals in a return match with Monaghan, a side they have already beaten in the Ulster championship.
But such is the format of the football championship, while Donegal have already played eight competitive fixtures, their opponents – who exited at the first time of asking in Ulster – have only played four games at this juncture.
Monaghan also come into this weekend’s games with an additional week off, by virtue of winning their round robin group, which sent them straight through to the last-eight of the All-Ireland.
"I personally think you can read a little bit too much into trying to guess what gets a team ready," said Cavanagh, speaking to RTÉ Sport. "Because we've seen in previous years, maybe the likes of a Kerry come out of Munster, and the narrative always is, they weren't tested, they didn't play enough games, they didn't find out enough about themselves.
"I know the best years that I had in Tyrone jersey were the years that we were playing competitively week on week. And in Ulster you're always tested. So I actually think the Ulster teams coming down this weekend have a much greater advantage because they've been playing the new rules in a very competitive environment.
"They’ve had to be at the pitch of the battle really early on. They've known they had to be right from April really. So they're well road-tested at this point.
"I know, the week that's in it, the Tyrone-Dublin games, I think it was 2005…because we had two replays in the Ulster final and replays in the All-Ireland quarter-final, I think we played five or six weeks running week on week, and I'm pretty sure there's probably a couple of six-day turnarounds within that as well."
In fact, Cavanagh believes that, in one sense, that Donegal have only themselves to blame for not beating Tyrone in their home ground in that group game, which ultimately sent them into the preliminary stage last weekend.
While he also feels that Donegal have to accept that there is an element of the "luck of the draw" about it, already well aware of the format in both Ulster and the All-Ireland phase, which has led to the prolonged run of games.
And yet, the three-time All-Ireland winner, feels that the players will embrace and enjoy the run of games, which takes focus away from the training ground and into the competition.
"As a player, I loved it. I felt fresh, I felt strong. I felt, because all the heavy lifting was all done at the weekend, your Tuesday and Thursday sessions were only really sort of priming the body and recovering the body.
"You can't replicate what you're getting on a matchday in training. So as long as you're not picking up bad injuries, I think the more game scenario and week-on-week scenario actually only does you good."
Cavanagh expects an element of mind games to the scenario with McGuinness attempting to create the age old "us against the world" mentality, which can help motivate his side to push on towards a place in the final.
"I suppose it all depends the way you dress this up. It's obviously been in his (McGuinness') head for the last number of weeks. So it's been something that's been bugging him and it's obviously built on him. You can see the frustration that's there from him," said Cavanagh.
"I'm not totally sure it's the right thing to do. He'll be better at psychology than I would be, but from a coach's perspective, I would think it's not a great thing to be telling your players that they're tired.
"I remember whenever we were in those five or six weekends in a row, the way Mickey Harte would have been dressing it up to us would have been, 'think of all the great competitive games we're getting here, how much sharper we are’.
"And to be honest with you, at the end of that year that we came through that period, the sharpness and the battle hardness of us, it made everything very easy.
"I would wonder whether there's different messages going out externally as to what's maybe going out internally.
"If you were to draw up a masterplan, you'd want to have that little bit of external, ‘the world is against us’. But I would suspect that maybe internally he'd be going with 'this is going to make us so much stronger'.
"I think that's standard. Every team that's won anything has always used that at some point in time.
"Whenever we were in the back door, having to play week on week, you were just glad because you'd lost a game. You were just sort of happy to be still in the championship.
"And when you look at it in the cold light of day, Donegal losing to Tyrone in Ballybofey knocked them back. And they lost that gap, that extra week of rest that is so valuable this time of year.
"I don't think for one minute that there's someone here in Croke Park trying to take Jim and Donegal down. It's more a circumstance of the systems we have and the luck of the draw, their performance that night in Ballybofey.
"To be honest with you, I don't think it'll have a major influence on the games this weekend or from here on in.
"If Donegal win this weekend, you'll never hear of it again probably."
