KARL McKAIGUE'S first-choice gloves will winter in Cavan.
The Derry corner-back’s hangdog look in the immediate aftermath of his side’s defeat to Tipperary in last Saturday’s All-Ireland SFC Qualifiers said it all. But when a Cavan teenager asked for the Slaughtneil man’s gloves, they were duly presented to him. Not thrown at him. Classy.
Kingspan Breffni Park had just become a killing ground for McKaigue’s dream of a day out at Croker in the last-eight of the competition, but Derry’s number four understood nobody died in Cavan that day. A dream maybe, but no mortal soul.
“Very disappointed to go out, but we have no excuses because we played nowhere near our potential,” the glue-like defender said.
“You can’t concede 1-21 and expect to win an inter-county football game at this stage of the competition - that’s the long and short of it.”
This year has delivered a longer than usual summer for McKaigue and co. In his first year in the hot seat, Derry boss Damian Barton has brought his charges to the cusp of August football. But did Derry’s longer than usual Championship odyssey come at a price? Did the matches in the Qualifiers against Louth, Meath and Cavan leave Derry desperately short of energy when, in the dregs of the game last Saturday, a Tipp team coming off a three-week break produced a tip-top finish?
“You could have mentioned tiredness last week after the Cavan game, when we had just had our third game on the bounce but, instead, everyone was saying that playing every week allows you to get a bit of momentum built up. The flip side of that is that tiredness does creep in though.
“But look, we were all fresh enough to take another step towards making the quarter-finals, although maybe some people might say that the last 10 minutes of the game told a wee bit on us but, then again, we had six subs to come on. It’s a 21 man game now, so I don’t think we can blame tiredness.”
Football is a language McKaigue speaks more fluently than most. He is gracious in defeat and scotches any suggestion the Oak Leafers might have done Tipp football a disservice by ignoring their claims for a summer residence in Croke Park this year.
“Tipperary got to the last-12 on merit and there was no way we were gonna underestimate them," he added.
“They’ve had a lot of success at minor and U21 level. They won an All-Ireland minor in the last few years and we were never going to go in against them in a complacent mood. I’m not sure if they have ever been in the quarter-finals before, but the best of luck to them anyway.”
As the dust of battle begins to clear, McKaigue looks to the future. He says the Derry SFC is on the horizon and the Oak Leafers will “regroup, sit back and learn from our experiences this year”: “We hit rock bottom against Tyrone, but picked ourselves up and strung a few victories together and we’ll take confidence from the run and hopefully, for a lot of the lads in their first year playing senior county football, this year’s Championship will stand to them but, just right now, there’s massive disappointment in the camp."
