Gaelic Games:All Star Kevin Cassidy has been released from the Donegal senior football panel by manager Jim McGuinness after a meeting between the pair in Letterkenny on Monday afternoon.
Although McGuinness would not comment any further, it is believed the decision was taken over comments made by Cassidy in a book chronicling Donegal’s run to the All-Ireland semi-finals this year.
Cassidy’s thoughts make up one of the nine chapters of This Is Our Year, in which the 30-year-old wing back gives an insight into the behind the scenes preparation undertaken by the side.
In one part, Cassidy gives a detailed insight into the training regime undertaken under McGuinness.
He writes: “Jim’s warm-ups are unbelievable. You feel like dying in the middle of them. We might have warmed up with the ball for half an hour. Then we go into springs, eighty-metre sprints, one hundred-metre sprints, shuttle runs, cones on twenty yards either side of you and you have to sprint to the cones and back again.
“You have four men in a line, and if there is any more than a second or two seconds of a difference between the four men, you go again. There is no slacking off, there is no way out. It's the hardest I’ve ever trained in my life”.
Cassidy was persuaded by McGuinness to return to the Donegal set-up last autumn after they had been knocked out by Armagh in a qualifier last year.
He enjoyed a fine All-Ireland campaign, kicking the winning point against Kildare in the quarter-finals and picking up the second All Star of his career.