Derry through to a National Football League Division One final against Dublin and a blockbuster Ulster SFC clash with a Jim McGuinness-led Donegal on the horizon. It has a familiar ring to it.
You won’t need to remind Chrissy McKaigue, Ciarán McFaul or Gareth McKinless how things worked out for them and Derry either when they last found themselves in this situation, exactly a decade ago.
Derry lost that 2014 Division One final to Dublin by a cricket score, were beaten by Donegal a few weeks later in Ulster and as if to complete the crash, bang, wallop experience suffered a round one qualifier KO at the hands of Longford.
And that was that. Could it happen again to Derry this weekend and in the coming weeks? It’s possible, if unlikely. Mickey Harte and Derry have been warned of what Dublin are capable of when they truly cut loose. They shredded his native Tyrone just last weekend, winning by 21 points.
“It certainly would be [damaging] if we went away with that kind of margin, it wouldn’t be a good place to be but I don’t think that is going to be the case,” said manager Harte.
He is clearly cautious when it comes to taking on Dublin though. Only this month he resisted the temptation to meet Dublin’s challenge head-on at Celtic Park, fielding a weakened team and suffering the anticipated comprehensive defeat. Derry won all of their other games and will face Dublin again on Sunday in the Division One decider. Harte explained his thinking behind not starting key men including Conor Glass, Ethan Doherty, Niall Loughlin, Padraig McGrogan and Eoin McEvoy that evening.
“Well, we didn’t put out the best team that we had,” acknowledged Harte. “It was kind of, I suppose, a precaution because, number one, if you put out your best team there’s no guarantee we’d win anyway.
“But if you did win then this unbeaten run is on in the league, and the talk is on that because you won five games in a row big things will happen and all of that, and there isn’t the substance to be saying that if you’ve any sense.
“But if you’re an outsider looking in and if you want to paint a picture and create a narrative, you can do that.
“So I don’t think it was the worst thing in the world that we didn’t win that game. I think it helps us to be where we are today.”
Harte described the 5-18 that Dublin registered against Tyrone last Sunday as “a battering”. The really impressive thing, or worrying depending on your persuasion, is that Dessie Farrell started just six of his 2023 All-Ireland final team. Stephen Cluxton, Michael Fitzsimons, the Small brothers, Paul Mannion, James McCarthy and Seán Bugler didn’t line out and Harte said he wouldn’t be surprised if ‘some of the serious operators with two pockets full of medals appear again’ this weekend.
“I think that was maybe their way of letting people know that the six-in-a-row team, okay, this isn’t exactly the six-in-a-row team but watch out what’s coming
His sense is that this is a Dublin team on a mission to prove people wrong with the All-Ireland holders currently on a five-game winning streak.
“I think that was maybe their way of letting people know that the six-in-a-row team, okay, this isn’t exactly the six-in-a-row team but watch out what’s coming,” he said. “I think that’s what they’re saying. They’re making a statement of intent here again. Because people were tending to say, ‘Oh, a lot of those older statesmen are gone, Dublin are not what they used to be’. They had to take that for a while and I think they weren’t too enamoured about that. I think they’re firing back and saying, ‘Just take care what you say about us because we’ll show you we’re not a spent force’.”
Harte confirmed that Derry will fine-tune their Championship preparations with a training camp in Portugal between the league final and the April 20th showdown with Donegal.
“I don’t need to say much about it, it’s a fact of life, it’s been set up and we’re going,” said Harte before being reminded he rarely undertook such trips with Tyrone. “Times change. There’s lots of things happening now that I wouldn’t have done in the noughties and didn’t feel we needed to. The whole game has got more complicated, more complex, it’s more strategic. There’s more thinking required.”
The back-to-back Ulster champions may very well have franked their excellence by that stage by winning a first Division One title since 2008. Harte said it would be a significant landmark if they could pull it off.
“Derry aren’t coming down [with league titles], they were very good when they won a lot of league titles at a certain stage,” he said. “I think they got four league titles around when they got their one All-Ireland and they probably reflect on that and maybe suggest they should have got more All-Irelands at that time.”
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