Football

Derry learned lessons from Down to beat Tipperary - Rory Gallagher

Derry's Shane McGuigan takes on Jack Kennedy of Tipperary at Celtic Park on Sunday. Picture Margaret McLaughlin
Derry's Shane McGuigan takes on Jack Kennedy of Tipperary at Celtic Park on Sunday. Picture Margaret McLaughlin Derry's Shane McGuigan takes on Jack Kennedy of Tipperary at Celtic Park on Sunday. Picture Margaret McLaughlin

DERRY boss Rory Gallagher reckoned that ‘old school’ lessons learned from the defeat to Down helped his team overcome Tipperary.

The Oak Leafers almost fell over the line, failing to score against 12, then 13 opponents until deep into added time, thankful for the hard defensive work they’d done in the first half to hold their wind-assisted opponents to three points.

Gallagher acknowledged that Derry had performed better in their loss in Newry than in holding off Tipp: "Massively. We played much better last week than we did this week. We did a bit of a pool session the morning after and watched the first half against Down back again and felt we did an awful lot right.

“To be fair though, we felt we could learn a bit from Down as well. We felt that, and it's a bit old school, but we felt we didn’t get enough blocks in, enough pressure on the ball going in and today we did that much better and it probably resulted in Tipp being held scoreless from play…”

Derry extended their 4-3 half-time lead to a 9-4 advantage midway through the second period, apparently boosted also by Tipp losing both Steven O’Brien and Daire Brennan to red cards in quick succession.

However, David Power’s side scored twice – once when they only had 12 men on the pitch with Alan Campbell in the ‘sin bin’ – and somehow stopped Derry scoring again until Shane McGuigan’s 73rd minute point from play sealed the victory.

Yet Gallagher wasn’t surprised Derry had to battle all the way for the win, explaining: "I had watched Tipp in both their games [against Down and Louth] and both days they could have lost yet they ended up with three points so we knew they were very resilient.

“They have been in an All-Ireland U21 final in 2015 and were All-Ireland [senior] semi-finalists in 2016, you know they have good pedigree.”

The attitude displayed pleased Gallagher: "It was good. Even though we lost last week, the character was very good.

"Inter-county football, bar maybe if you are playing for Dublin at the minute, it is full of ups and downs for every county. It is a test of character and generally it is the people who are mentally toughest and the strongest characters win out.”

Having said that, good football has to be played too, and Gallagher pointed out that “what I would be most pleased with was that I thought we were, by a stretch, the better team.”

The former Fermanagh and Donegal boss has seen overall improvement, commenting: "Over the past few weeks I feel there are a number of things we have improved on, key areas of the game. Can we be better? Absolutely, but I am happy that the boys are mad keen to learn. I'm happy at the skill level and happy at the attitude. Now we have to test ourselves over the next few weeks.”

Derry will still find it tough to get out of Division Three and ensure that they won’t be playing in the Tier Two Championship this summer, but Gallagher insists that’s not on their minds, at least for now:

"From speaking to the boys, they are not even thinking about that at this moment in time. They just want to go out and play better for Derry and build something.

"We have an open mind about the league. We want to be better at the end of the league than we were at the start. That's the approach, particularly when you come in with a new group.

"We are trying to build a consistency here. We have put it out to the boys. Obviously I am not from Derry but, looking in from the outside, the turnover of players, in and out of the squad, the lack of consistency in selection, lack of togetherness, we are trying to build on that.

"We think the age profile of the squad is really good and we know there is good talent that has come through in Derry so it is a matter now of sticking together.”

There’s a break this weekend, before Derry host Louth on Sunday February 23, with Cork, Longford, and Offaly still to play.

“Naturally, none of us want to be in tier two but that's the hand we have been dealt,” says Gallagher. “We are in Division Three with its relative pressures and all, but right now we just want to concentrate on Louth.

"We want to hopefully get two points against Louth and go to Cork for a big battle - but we have to look after our business against Louth first”.