Karl Lacey talks about the atmosphere in Donegal in the last few days counting down to the All-Ireland Final. Courtesy of Ulster Bank's GAA web site http://gaa.ulsterbank.com/

It's getting a bit crazy in Donegal as the days tick down to Sunday’s All-Ireland final.

It’s hard for us players to not get involved in the excitement, but we have to stay away from it because we have a job to do against Mayo and hopefully we’ll be able to enjoy it all afterwards.

I’m lucky with the job I have in Ulster Bank in that I don’t have to be out and about too much so I get up, go to work and go home.

If I have training, I go training, but that’s about it – you won’t see me standing about on the street having a chat or going into a shop to buy the paper these days.

Jim brought us away for a few days at the end of last week and that was really great. It was brilliant just to get out of the county and away from all the hype.

The excitement is great for the fans and I think they really believe we can do it this year because we’ve put back-to-back Ulster titles together and we’ve beaten Kerry and Cork.

It’s great that they are enjoying it, but from a player’s perspective it is all going mad and that’s why the break we had was ideal.

We had two days in Carton House and then we switched to Johnstown House for another two days.

There was a wedding in Carton on the Friday and Saturday so we had to move, but that was no problem because we’ve stayed in Johnstown before and the two hotels are only about 15 minutes away by bus.

The facilities in both of them are great, the pitches are perfect and a lot of lads made good use of the facilities.

You saw plenty of them ordering smoothies and mocktails and there were one or two swanning around in their bathrobes too!

It was nice to get away with everyone in the set-up just for a few days, to have the craic and to be away from all the hype in Donegal.

We did our training and there was none of us watching the television or reading papers so it was a complete break from everything that’s going on outside the camp.

People have asked me about the All-Ireland win in 1992 and to be honest I don’t remember a whole lot about it.

My granddad Michael Kelly brought me to Croke Park, but I was only eight-years-old. I was in Donegal Town for the homecoming too, but all I remember is having two Donegal flags painted on my cheeks!

Granddad is going down to Croker again on Sunday and he’ll be one of the first people there. I’d say he’ll be heading down about 7:00am in the morning and I really hope we can give him something to cheer about.

Karl Lacey