DERRY attacker James Kielt fully expects a positive response against Galway this weekend after their abysmal defeat to Down 11 days ago.
Damian Barton’s men lie in the relegation zone of Division Two with three games remaining against Galway (a), Cork (h) and Fermanagh (a).
They drew with Clare in their opener and chiselled out a home win against leaders Kildare but they’ve suffered heavy defeats to Meath and Down.
Losing a number of their Championship team from last year, Kielt says, hasn’t helped their efforts to hold their ground in Division Two.
“I suppose if you sit back and analyse it [player departures], it doesn’t help,” acknowledged Kielt.
“Derry, like all counties, can’t afford to miss a lot of top players because there are maybe not that many players that can play at that level.
“It’s alright for Dublin, for example, because they could field three teams that would probably be as strong as most counties in Ireland.
“Even the likes of Tyrone, imagine if they lost Mattie Donnelly, Peter Harte and a few of their forwards, they’d soon be struggling the following season.
“But at the same time we’ve known since October/November time what we’re working with, so it’s only an issue to a certain extent.”
Slaughtneil's defensive trio Brendan Rogers, Chrissy and Karl McKaigue are club-tied, while Eoghan Brown and Niall Holly are unavailable.
Kielt, who has been involved in the Derry senior set-up since 2009, added: “I can’t blame the lads that have come in because they’ve worked hard and are dedicated and that’s all you can ask.
“[But] Standing at wing-back alongside a couple of inexperienced players isn’t easy. It’s hard on those players because they don’t have much experience around them. There is not much change to our forward line from last year; the defence is where the big change has been.”
Derry, to their credit, have shown impressive resilience in games against Clare and Kildare. They fashioned last-minute scores to gain points from those games – but their first half performance against Down was the worst yet under Barton.
“We were 13-nil down which was embarrassing,” said the Kilrea man.
“Down had a strong wind in the first half, they got a couple of scores and we’d a couple of chances but didn’t take them. The longer the game went on, the worse it got really.
“We got 1-3 just at the end of the first half which actually gave us a wee bit of hope. But that was about the height of it.
“We just gave ourselves too much work to do. We never got going, whereas against Kildare we were five points down and we got six or seven points after half-time and we were back in the game. But Down killed the game in the first 10 or 15 minutes of the second half.”
Mark Lynch and Danny Heavron are still injured while Conor McAtamney has been travelling back and forth from England to be available for League games.
“You always plan to be much better [in the next game] particularly the way we lost against Down,” Kielt said.
“So you’d be hoping for a response and I suppose Galway will be looking for a response too because they lost their last game [to Meath].
“I think Galway will be looking to challenge for All-Irelands over the next few years and they will be looking at us thinking that this is a must-win game.
“But we’ll be trying to get something from each of our last three games,” said Kielt.
