Karl Lacey has revealed that the ‘fight’ had gone out of Donegal at half-time of last year’s All-Ireland exit to Mayo at Croke Park. 
Lacey started that match on the bench but was introduced after only 24 minutes as Donegal were being dismantled at ease by a rampant Mayo.
Donegal trailed Mayo by 12 points at half-time and Lacey has recalled McGuinness trying to rally the troops for the second half by insisting that they we’re still in the game.
Lacey told the Irish Independent, “I remember Jim saying to us we’re still in this, we can still win this.
“He still had the belief in us that we could go out and put in a big performance, but you can see it in the boy’s eyes in the dressing room, how the hell are we going to turn this round.
“That was the disappointing thing, the fight had nearly gone out of us at that stage, Jim was trying to push us on a bit, in my three years under Jim, I never saw that happen before.
Lacey dismissed claims that Donegal didn’t have the hunger last season and claimed when they returned from their team holiday the celebrating stopped, but admitted they were playing catch-up with other counties because they had no pre-season.
“You’re looking around you and you know you just don’t have it in the legs, the hunger was there and we thought we were in a good place.
“Every man was trying their best but we just didn’t have it in the legs, didn’t have the endurance, didn’t have the speed or sharpness.
“You’re looking over at the sideline and asking Jim, ‘what the hell’s going on here?’ Jim didn’t have the answers.
“It was a funny year coming back from everything that happened in 2012 and going away on a team holiday, coming back on January 8.
“You’re straight in to National League nearly and you’ve no pre-season done, no base built up.
“We were just playing catch-up from there and never got up to the levels that any of the other teams were at.
“We were found out against Monaghan in the Ulster final and started to go downhill really from there.”
However, Lacey is delighted with how preparations for the 2014 season have begun and reckons Donegal can reach the dizzying heights of 2012 again.
“I got a good 70 minutes under the belt against Armagh and another 30 minutes against St.Mary’s we’re in a different place to last year and we’ve a good base of hard running down.
“We’re all looking forward to the first league match against Laois and hopefully we can get a positive result.