Ulster Senior Football Championship quarter-final: Tyrone v Derry (tomorrow, 4pm, Healy Park, live on RTÉ2 and BBC2 NI)
AT some point, Derry have to use the pot or get off it.
They have made great strides under Rory Gallagher and coming towards summer number three, they’re around about where they might have hoped to have been at this stage.
Division One football would have been nice but taking just a point out of the crunch games with Galway and Roscommon left them as the first team in modern history not to win promotion with 11 points.
The one thing that’s really missing is a big championship win. Any championship win would do them.
In the last decade, they’ve won one game in the Ulster Championship, a single-point victory over Down in 2015. Only Chrissy McKaigue, Benny Heron and Brendan Rogers of tomorrow’s team have ever experienced that winning feeling.
Others have slipped through their hands. Donegal in 2014. Armagh could easily have been beaten two years ago in the cold and empty Celtic Park. A noisy pocket of 200 Derry fans were ready to rejoice in Ballybofey last summer, but they missed enough to win two games and Patrick McBrearty saw to them in the end.
And in their last visit to Omagh three years ago, they were given no hope but led with nine minutes to go, only for Darren McCurry’s goal to push Tyrone to a six-point win.
That this is the eleventh consecutive year where a Derry side that existed in a state of permanent flux have drawn a Division One team for their first Ulster outing is misfortune on a grand scale.
But there comes the day they have to stop hiding behind that kind of excuse.
Chrissy McKaigue is 32. Benny Heron is 31. Emmett Bradley, 29. Brendan Rogers and Gareth McKinless are 28. Padraig Cassidy and Niall Loughlin are 27.
Heading to Healy Park to face the hardest of old dogs on their own stretch of road, a lot of this Derry team are not pups on the lane any more.
They may be a team building for the future but for those players, the shadows of inter-county football will shorten very quickly.
McKaigue has had excellent back-to-back championship displays on Patrick McBrearty and Rian O’Neill but there are questions of the rest on that list when it comes to the big, big days.
And Shane McGuigan too. He’s developed into a fine forward but, now 24, he’s yet to put up a big summer performance that would elevate him into the conversation about the country’s top forwards.
Ryan Kennedy kept him marginalised and scoreless from play in 2020. He was good in Ballybofey last year, but not match-winning good.
Almost certainly in against Padraig Hampsey, if he isn’t coming off with minimum two points from play, 100 per cent on his frees and at the very least 0-6 after his name in Monday morning’s paper, there’s no way Derry are winning this game.
Niall Loughlin, even moreso. He hasn’t produced enough big performances for what he’s capable of. There’s a look of lost confidence about him, but if he could rediscover it and fill in the gap left by Ciaran McFaul’s scoring absence, it would go a long way.
Despite not having hit the heights in this year’s league, the Glen man has been a big-game player down the years. He was the best player on the pitch in both of Gallagher’s first two championship games in charge.
Forget even the leadership and the playmaking he brought, it was a rare day that McFaul didn’t kick at least two points. On a good day, you’d get four. In a team that has landed on exactly 0-15 in its last two championship outings, they’ll miss his contribution badly.
Rory Gallagher will feel Derry are in with a great shout. He’ll set them up very compact and hard to beat. They have the pace in the middle eight to match and get at Tyrone.
The hosts will probably get to 17 points, one way or the other. They carry the greater threat to the green flag umpire’s workload, with Derry’s goalscoring record an even worse one than their winning record, having scored just two Ulster Championship goals in 10 years.
It was the introduction of Conor McKenna off the bench that sparked the holders into life in their preliminary round win away to Fermanagh. Having rightly won his appeal against a nonsense red card, the question now for Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher is whether they start him.
With Peter Harte expected back at six from having his appendix out, the temptation is probably not to. They’ll have noted Derry’s lack of depth and will feel that if the game does need broken open in the second half, who better to do the breaking?
That will mean a reprieve for Cathal McShane, who inches his way back to form. Chrissy McKaigue’s ability to extend a streak of just two points from play all season does turn the limelight firmly towards McCurry and Rogers on the other side.
2-28 for the season is one thing, but it’s the sharpness and the confidence the Edendork man is playing with that makes him a real bother. He settled the sides’ last meeting and went off pointing to his quad muscle, the 21st century version of Joe Brolly’s kisses.
Derry were blowing bubbles in these exact circumstances 16 years ago, when Tyrone were All-Ireland champions, first round in Omagh, and their neighbours kept them scoreless for 38 minutes en-route to a win that shocked the country.
Truth told, so many of Derry’s championship performances since then have lacked any aggression or belief. They’ve come to draw at dawn with a water pistol and two arms the one length. Tyrone have rolled them over and tickled their bellies on more than one occasion.
Rory Gallagher’s teams tend to bring a bit more than that.
You just get the feeling that Tyrone will leave for home tomorrow evening knowing and feeling that they’ve been through a battle, and that this may become a rivalry reborn for the next few years.
But you also feel that when it comes to the bit, the absence of Ciaran McFaul will tell on the scoreboard, where Derry have been locked on 0-15 in championship football under Gallagher. They need to break that ceiling.
Even though it might require extra-time and the summoning of their street-smarts, the All-Ireland champions will find their way through it.
KEY BATTLE
Brendan Rogers v Darren McCurry
WHEN Derry last came to Healy Park three years ago, Brendan Rogers had a tough time against Cathal McShane. Rory Gallagher has had a much better handle on his match-ups and moving Chrissy McKaigue into the full-back line creates a more natural balance. Rogers is suited well to a turning, twisting forward like McCurry. An aggressive defender in terms of when the ball is being played in, he’ll always try to get a hand in, McCurry might play on that and look to use his body to get in for a goal. With McShane struggling for form, the Edendork man has carried the Tyrone attack all through 2022. His goal in the final league game in Kerry was the perfect indication of the threat he now poses – catch, turn, finish. If Rogers can hold him goalless and to even a couple of points from play, Derry will have a great shout.
TACTICAL TAKE
THE game will basically be a race to 17 points, and therein lies the challenge for Derry. They’ve hit 0-15 on the nose in their two championship games under Gallagher, both against Division One opposition and both of which they lost when they might have won. Derry will use much the same template as they did in Ballybofey last year, where they defended very narrowly and broke at pace. But the loss of Ciaran McFaul is hugely significant in terms of their scoring potential and Rory Gallagher will struggle to replace the two or three points he’d bring on most big days. Tyrone left huge gaps defensively in Brewster Park two weeks ago but weren’t punished by Fermanagh until the game was already over. Rory Brennan was a surprise sweeper that afternoon, and is likely to revert to a man-marking job here. There’s speculation that Derry will put Gareth McKinless at midfield to try and free him up, a move that Tyrone could counter by throwing Conor McKenna in from the start. They might also bring Shane McGuigan a bit deeper in the fear that Tyrone would be able to swarm him inside.
REFEREE: Paddy Neilan (Roscommon)
WHERE TO WATCH:RTÉ2 or BBC2 NI
Likely line-ups
TYRONE
N Morgan
M McKernan R McNamee
N Loughlin L Murray
P Hampsey
S McGuigan
F Burns P Harte R Brennan
Paul Cassidy B Heron E Bradley
C Kilpatrick B Kennedy
C Glass G McKinless
C Meyler K McGeary N Sludden
Pdg Cassidy C Doherty E Doherty
D Canavan
P McGrogan
D McCurry C McShane
B Rogers C McKaigue
O Lynch
DERRY
