Within touching distance

Allianx NFL Division Twp
Derry v Clare
Sunday, 1pm, Owenbeg
Live on BBC iPlayer

By Michael McMullan (Gaelic Life) 

The snaking run and finish from Brendan Rogers sent a packed Celtic Park into overdrive. 

Coming from six points down to chin the Dubs was another significant step in Derry’s resurgence. 

The Oakleafers went from tame to wasteful before taking solace in a dressing room where regrouping was the order of the day. 

Niall Toner’s goal was one thing, but Gareth McKinless taking a yellow card and laying down a marker seconds later spoke volumes for the added heat Rory Gallagher’s side brought to the second half.  

Backward steps don’t break any delft.  

Winning in the manner they did would’ve been invaluable in the Derry learning curve. The now overused ‘down the stretch’ period of the game saw Derry take more right options than wrong ones.  

Lachlan Murray kicked over a monster point like the one in the McKenna Cup with the nerve of a man with way, way more than the 23 senior appearances to his growing reputation. Throw in Oisin McWilliams arrowing over a point that would grace any stage. 

Going into the game, the fact that Derry were a barometer for Dublin sums up the expeditious rise in the last two seasons. 

The hype and hysteria was followed by a weekend off. Would it kill the momentum? Maybe among the fans. If anything, it will have allowed the jets to be cooled inside the camp before getting ramped up for today. 

Derry must be wary today. They walked the same path last year. One with the smoothest of surfaces until a controversial second yellow card and subsequent one-match ban for Shane McGuigan in the hostile Hyde Park. 

A long trip home with doubt in the back of the Derry minds was followed by a hammering at the hands of Galway. It was a car crash. The game was over well before half-time. 

If Derry take their unbeaten run to 10 games this afternoon, promotion will be secured. For the first time since 2015, top flight football will return to Owenbeg and Celtic Park. 

It’s a long way from playing Sligo with relegation to Division Four on the other side of an unthinkable defeat that raised its ugly head. 

The last two weeks will allow the focus to switch to Clare who are gunning for a win that would take them closer to an eighth season in the second tier under Colm Collins. 

Emmet McMahon, Eoin Cleary and Gavin Cooney will be the names on the Derry minds as they factored in their defensive match-ups this week. Collins’ son ‘Podge’ and Keelan Sexton missed part of the league through injury, but will add to Clare’s cocktail today. 

The Banner season has been up and down. They wrestled an unlikely win from Louth who led for virtually the entire game. 

Meath drove four goals past them, with goalkeeper David Sexton since replaced by Stephen Ryan between the posts. 

Cork hit Clare for three goals in the last outing, but it’s the games in between that will keep Derry’s focus high. 

They came up short to Kildare in a game they should’ve won and played Dublin well for much of the game before being reeled in by Dessie Farrell’s cavalry sprung off the bench. 

When Clare think back to last year’s clash in Ennis, they can reflect on being level seconds after the interval before the introduction of Gareth McKinless. 

Derry then won possession from Stephen Ryan’s kick-out before Benny Heron hit the net and when McKinless added a second goal - also from squeezing the Clare kick-out - the Oaks were on their way to a 2-13 to 0-10 win. 

It got worse for Clare in the All-Ireland quarter-final when Derry put five goals past them on an afternoon Odhran Lynch leaked two at the other end. It mattered little as the Oakleafers were home and hosed. 

The retired David Tubridy is one of four players from that day in Croke Park not to have tasted league action so far this season. 

Eoin McEvoy will be the only Derry player not to have played last summer and Clare’s familiarity will have been helped with the addition of new Slaughtneil manager Mark Doran’s addition to Colm Collins’ backroom team. 

While he’ll not have been up close with the Slaughtneil county contingent so far, he’ll have gone into Emmet Park with his eyes open. You’d imagine he’s studied Glen and saw what makes Ethan Doherty and Conor Glass tick. The same can be said for Magherafelt’s trio of McEvoy, Conor McCluskey and Odhran Lynch. 

While Derry’s brief is simple and a draw will do them, that’s not how it works or how Rory Gallagher’s incessant want for more would allow. 

There is still a visit to Páirc Uí Chaoimh to follow next Sunday and Cork have a tricky visit to Ardee today. 

That’s all well and good, but the last 15 days will have been about one thing - Clare, a win and getting the job done. The one they failed to close out last year. 

If the mentality is spot on and the hunger for high standards follows the Oakleafers down the Owenbeg tunnel, today could well be the day Derry pull their seat up back up at the top table. 

GAA - The Rory Days

Michael McMullan (Gaelic Life) 

From Derry v Dublin NFL Programme - Saturday, March 4, 2023

Today is Rory Gallagher’s 40^th game as Derry manager and it’s fitting to see the Dubs rolling into town, one of the biggest names in the game. 

Dublin have set a benchmark for counties like Derry to gaze at from afar. If they are serious, the margin can be closed. Otherwise, it’s just about rolling out excuses about funding or paying homage to jewellery you can’t afford. 

Derry under Rory Gallagher are well and truly in the serious category with a 73 per cent win rate in league and championship before Sean Hurson tosses the leather into Derry air this evening. 

“The first reaction would be disappointment,” were the first words of Gallagher’s first post-game interview as Derry manager a 1-17 to 0-14 McKenna Cup defeat against Monaghan at the heel of 2019, after going 1-3 to 0-0 behind early doors. 

Derry fought themselves back into the game until Monaghan’s stopping of the runners halted energetic red and white clad young guns. 

“They showed a lot of knowhow and Division One knowhow,” Gallagher said of the Farney mentality on that December Sunday in Inniskeen. “We are very naïve and that was reflective, but for 40 odd minutes of that game, I thought we were outstanding.” 

Next came another defeat McKenna Cup, this time to Donegal on a midweek night when Gallagher expressed his frustration at the Oakleafers’ preparations on home soil when he felt their opponents' “culture” was on a different level. 

"I would have been very unhappy with it…and that is something we have got to learn sharp,” he told the assembled press of Derry’s pre-game protocols and timekeeping, while also commenting how some players outside the matchday squad sat in the stand in their club gear instead of being with the squad.  

"You have to give every game its respect. Donegal arrived here, as one, on a bus, well fed and well prepared with their brief team meeting and they move on. I don't think we had that.”

Leitrim, once again in Celtic Park, were the opponents for Gallagher’s first league game as Derry boss and the visitors could well have taken more than a draw from the Division Three clash. 

A week later, Derry had victory over Down in their sights under the Páirc Esler lights until substitutes Pat Havern and Sean Dornan got a late grip at midfield to squeeze away any realistic promotion hopes. 

When Derry came out of Covid with a streamlined squad and management team, they should’ve chinned Armagh in the 2020 championship only for a lacklustre start. 

"That's the challenge now for us, to commit to each other to be better over the next 10 to 12 weeks,” Gallagher said minutes after stepping through the championship exit door. 

“I know from living in Donegal and having been involved with Donegal, the effort that they give to each other. We have been short of that but that's the way we need to go about it.” 

Since then, only Galway (twice) have beat Derry in league or championship. In an interview on the cusp of promotion from Division Three, Gallagher expressed how the Oakleaf squad must start beating teams they’d not have been expected to beat if they were to step up the ladder. 

It was a directed at a Derry camp with a youthful injection, giving players the chance to grow into the jersey and become the next generation. 

Take Paul Cassidy. Since making his debut 33 games ago as someone many in the county felt wasn’t cutting the mustard, he hasn’t missed a game and kicked his entire 2-23 tally from play. He’s now what every successful team needs - a link man who can score. Paudi McGrogan is another player Gallagher won’t go into war without, two men who sum up the Derry progress. 

Shane McGuigan, who Gallagher mentioned didn’t capitalise on a half goal chance in their 2020 defeat to Down, now knows the importance of being both sided as opposed to both footed - another nugget offered and taken. It’s the variation of the turn that asks defenders a more difficult question, helped with hours of lockdown kicking against the gable wall, 100 per day, with his right peg. 

From outside the bubble, the hallmark of Gallagher is the unrelenting bellowing of instructions along the sideline. He bucks the trend. Despite being full engrossed in a game and without wearing an earpiece or linking in with any sort of stats output before a post-game interview, he unbelievably shoots off stats and key moments with ease. 

Another thing is evident. He rarely - if ever - says maybe. I remember a query on Brendan Rogers’ fitness ahead of the 2021 championship being greeted with “Mal…Brendan won’t be available for selection….Brendan will be playing full back”. A very definite response in relation to a hamstring injury that saw Rogers sit out a league final as a precaution. 

It helps paint a picture of a very definitive individual steering the Oakleaf ship, a dressing room devoid of ambiguity. 

There are also the media interviews littered with references to a host of sports. A fanatical Liverpool fan, Gallagher often offers examples from the Red’s style of play to annotate an example. 

Before the All-Ireland semi-final with Galway, he fielded a question about shot selection. Without batting an eyelid, he used Golden State Warriors basketball star Steph Curry’s ability to get into the area for a three-point shot as a reference point. 

“The Warriors create a situation where is on his own, one on one, taking those shots and has a high percentage,” Gallagher replied, comparing him to Ciaran Kilkenny, Con O’Callaghan and David Clifford in the GAA arena. “It’s the intelligence behind the way who those teams attack that I think is brilliant.” 

At the same press conference, there was a witty reply when asked if he was frustrated when labelled as a one-dimensional coach. 

He wasn’t, pointing to how football is played in waves. The Ireland cricket team was discussed, outlining how bowlers need to be able to bat and batters must be able to field. 

“You have to change...like newspapers,” he told a scrum of reporters. “If they stayed old school, they’d have to fight for survival. You have to go online and be different. You don’t want to be different for the sake of it.”  

When the fat in is the fire today, it’s unlikely Gallagher will change too much. He’ll spit on his hands, he'll roar and he'll shout. The players will be in no uncertain terms of what is required and Dublin will know the team who were once in the lower league wilderness are now snapping at their heels. 

Rory Gallagher’s win rate as Derry manager

McKenna Cup (9 games):               44%

NFL (23):                                          78%

SFC (7):                                             57%

NFL and SFC (30):                           73%

All competitions (39):                    67%

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