Martin McElhinney
Irish Gaelic football player from Donegal
Martin McElhinney (born 10 August 1988) is an Irish Gaelic footballer who plays for St Michael's and also, formerly, for the Donegal county team (between 2007 and 2019).
Among other accolades, he has one All-Ireland Senior Football Championship title and four Ulster Senior Football Championship titles to his name. He is from Creeslough.
Playing career
Club and college
McElhinney's club reached the final of the 2011 Donegal Senior Football Championship— their first ever senior final—but lost, though McElhinney scored during the game.
McElhinney also played for DCU.
Inter-county
McElhinney scored two goals for Donegal at Croke Park in the 2006 Ulster Minor Football Championship final, which Donegal won.
He made his debut at senior inter-county level under the management of Brian McIver in 2007.
By the time of Jim McGuinness's arrival as manager, McElhinney was still part of the team. Against Derry in the 2011 Ulster Senior Football Championship final, Rory Kavanagh went off injured late in the first half and McElhinney replaced him. In the 2012 Ulster final against Down, his appearance as a second-half substitute was credited with being vital to the victory. He started Donegal's next game, a comprehensive All-Ireland Senior Football Championship quarter-final defeat of Kerry at Croke Park.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Martin McElhinney” as irish Gaelic football player from Donegal. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as irish Gaelic football player from Donegal. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6776157. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1988, 2007, 2019 and 2011.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Martin McElhinney” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.