KARL LACEY WILL be on Donegal’s match day squad for the first time in 2016 this Sunday.
Rory Gallagher has confirmed that the Four Masters man will take his place in the panel and can be expected to feature at some stage in O’Donnell Park, where Donegal will face Roscommon.
Lacey was given an extended break by Gallagher in the early part of the season, but has since worked his way back into collective training with the squad.
Lacey has had injury troubles in recent years and Gallagher was keen for the four-time All-Star and 2012 Footballer of the Year to be in top form heading into the summer.
Lacey is lecturing in strength strength and conditioning and performance analysis two-and-a-half days a week in Blanchardstown Institute of Technology while also overseeing a new partnership between Letterkenny Institute of Technology and Donegal GAA.
He trains in Dublin on Tuesdays and will join up with the Donegal squad tonight.
“Karl will be back in the squad and I expect him to get some game time – featuring in the game now won’t be beyond him,” Gallagher told Donegal Sport Hub.
“It’s a huge lift to get Karl back into it. He’s in great nick and is totally injury free. That’s why we wanted the slow build-up with him.”
Mark McHugh is said to be ‘moving up the rungs with his fitness’ while Colm McFadden has yet to be fully integrated into training, but is ‘making good progress’.
Donegal are definitely without the suspended Leo McLoone for Sunday’s game following his red card in Tralee on Sunday while the Donegal County Board have yet to make a call on whether to accept or appeal the proposed one-match suspension for Neil McGee.
Frank McGlynn is nursing a hamstring injury at present and it is said to be ‘more unlikely than likely’ that the Glenfin man – who missed Sunday’s defeat in Kerry – will play.
Kieran Gillespie, Jack O’Brien and Ciaran Thompson have all returned to training following recent injuries and are set to be involved with Donegal’s Under-21s on Wednesday night in an Ulster Under-21 quarter-final in Ballybofey.
Rory Carr is a ‘number of weeks’ away from getting back from his shoulder injury while Mark Anthony McGinley is expected to be available from the end of the regulation League stage.
Gallagher said: “There will be a lot of plusses this year in getting through to a League semi-final, especially when you look at the boys we’re getting back late, the injured players who are returning and the younger players we’re getting into playing games.”
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