Northern Ireland forward Jamie Donley made his first pre-season start for Tottenham Hotspur at the weekend as the Premier League side were held to a scoreless draw by Luton Town.
The 20-year-old from Antrim was deployed as a left-back by Spurs’ new boss Thomas Frank, but Donley admitted he was just happy to get more game time under his belt with the new Premier League campaign less than three weeks away.
“It was a good work out for me and it was good to get 90 minutes into my legs,” said Donley, who had a very impressive loan spell with Leyton Orient in League One last term, “I thought we did well, the gaffer talks a lot about keeping clean sheets so that was a real positive for us.”
Elsewhere, Conor Bradley played the second half of Liverpool’s 4-2 defeat to Italian giants Milan, while Justin Devenny also got a run out as a substitute in Crystal Palace’s 3-0 victory at Crawley Town.
Sunderland duo Dan Ballard and Trai Hume both started the Wearsiders 3-0 reverse to Scottish Premiership outfit Hearts before being substituted twenty minutes from time.
After the game, former Linfield defender Hume admitted it was a below par performance for the Premier League side who face Hull City in their next friendly encounter on Tuesday evening.
“It wasn’t good enough really,” declared Hume. “Results aren’t the most important thing in pre-season as we need to get minutes in the legs and obviously get our fitness levels up, but we also need to keep our standards up as well and that wasn’t good enough.
“We made mistakes today and got punished, we should be organised and disciplined the way we usually are, so we will go away and analyse the game and hopefully won’t perform like that again.”
Meanwhile, Pierce Charles kept a clean sheet as Sheffield Wednesday won their final warm-up game 2-0 against Mansfield Town and Bailey Peacock-Farrell played in Blackpool’s 1-1 draw away to Doncaster Rovers.
Other members of Michael O’Neill’s senior squad to get significant game time over the final weekend of pre-season for Football League clubs were Isaac Price (WBA), Ethan Galbraith (Swansea City), Eoin Toal (Bolton Wanderers), Ruairi McConville (Norwich City), Brodie Spencer (Oxford United), Ali McCann (Preston North End) and Shea Charles (Southampton).
Finally, in the Scottish League Cup, Ronan Hale, who scored a hat-trick in midweek, failed to add to his four goals this season as Ross County lost 3-1 at home to Partick Thistle, however, MaKenzie Kirk hit a brace as St Johnstone ran out 8-0 winners against 10-man Elgin City.
