Allianz Football League Division Two: Meath v Derry (tomorrow, 2pm, Páirc Tailteann)
TWO weeks ago, the picture looked very different.
That’s not just a Derry thing. Their draw in Roscommon and heavy home defeat by Galway has taken promotion out of their hands.
Yet there would have been a sense just a fortnight ago that if they had put themselves in pole position, two points in Navan would be a mere formality.
That would have been a fair assessment of where they were both at then, but how quickly it’s all changed.
Having been nowhere near it in their first two games against Galway and Roscommon, they laboured to a draw against Down and were lucky to get a point at home to Offaly. They looked in real bother.
But Andy McEntee’s side are now unbeaten in four and are coming in off back-to-back wins over Cork and Clare. They will finish fourth regardless and victory here would see them finish just a point behind Derry in the final table.
When Meath are confident and the sun shines on the dry, wind-beaten surface, Páirc Tailteann becomes a very difficult place to go.
The ahead-of-schedule returns of full-back Conor McGill and midfielder Brian Menton have been huge for their revival, offsetting the loss of Shane McEntee, who had to depart for Mali on a peacekeeping tour with the Irish Defence Forces.
Their wins came at the expense of a Clare team who have dipped and a Cork side that must avoid defeat in Tullamore to avoid dropping to the third tier.
Yet as much as Rory Gallagher shrugged in half disconsolation last weekend that Derry maybe didn’t deserve to go up when they couldn’t beat either Roscommon or Galway, a failure to win tomorrow would bring certainty to such thoughts.
It’s not exactly time to throw baby and bathwater out. All the optimism around the Oak Leafers’ progress over the last three years hasn’t gone up in smoke over one result.
Galway will have left Derry questioning themselves, but Shane McGuigan is always a significant part of the answer. Sometimes too significant.
Whether it was embedded in the minds that they would struggle without him, there was a definite lack of confidence or assurance about their attacking play last weekend.
Their running game was blunt and too easily swallowed up. None of that has been the norm. It felt like a bad day at the office right from the moment Matthew Tierney punched home the first of four goals. That concession said a lot in itself, given Derry hadn’t conceded a single goal in the league up until then.
Ciaran McFaul’s scoring input from centre-forward is badly needed to supplement an attacking unit that has seen teenager Lachlan Murray thrown in at the deep end.
He’s done well – his opening score last weekend was a beauty - but it will be a few years before Derry fans will be entitled to expect big scoring returns from him.
Oisin McWilliams’ broken jaw is likely to end his inter-county season. The red card issued to Paul Conroy for the incident could in itself have a fairly damaging impact on Derry’s hopes.
No matter they do, their ambitions of promotion are out of their hands.
If Roscommon beat what is likely to be a half-strength Galway in The Hyde, then it will be the Connacht pair who go back where they came from at the end of 2020.
All Derry can do is hold up their own end of the bargain. That’s not the straightforward task it looked at the start of this month.
They’re in the mix until the final day, where they’d hoped and expected to be.
Team 10 or 11 in the country is where Derry are at right now. That’s remarkable progress in itself.
But the difference in those two spots in a whole entire tier of league football in 2023, and it’s hard to escape the sense that while they’ll probably do their own part and win, they will be in Division Two again next year.
