Derry progress after faltering second-half show

No reason to get excited. Derry are through to an Ulster football semi-final at the expense of Down. Between them, these counties haven’t won an Ulster title for a combined 38 years. Derry are at least still in the hunt for the 2015 edition, knowing they’ll need to show far better form than this to actually win.

Manager Brian McIver readily admitted as much. Such was the unease with which they eventually won through, he couldn’t hype Derry’s semi-final appearance even if he wanted to. “It was a poor second half from us, after a good first half,” said McIver by way of immediate summation. “Even when we had the extra man, we seemed to over-elaborate, took too long on the ball, took too long to get the kick-outs moving, and came across the field, whereas we were moving the ball at pace in the first half.”

Indeed, if anything, the red card shown to Down’s Conaill McGovern immediately after the restart appeared to prompt Derry to fall back into their shell. “I said to one of the selectors, just after it happened, ‘this will do us no favours’. So, often in the past I have seen it happening. I would love to get an explanation as to why teams do that. It’s happened so often. But we got out of it with a result.”

Both McIver and Down manager Jim McCorry suggested McGovern's sending-off was harsh. McCorry actually suggested it was possibly orchestrated.

“I genuinely did not see it,” said McCorry. “I asked Conaill and he pleaded that he had not done anything wrong. I think some of the view is that it was very much orchestrated, that there was very little in it, that pressure was brought to bear on the umpires. I don’t know if that was the case or not but we can do very little about it now other than appeal the red card.

“And we can do nothing about the decision on the day. It’s unfortunate that the three games that we lost this year, we lost with red cards. Having said that, it was a spur that we were not expecting, to move forward, and we played a bit of football after we lost him.”

McCorry was certainly adamant that Down didn’t deserve to lose. “No doubt about it. I mean opportunities were there, we were the dominant team in the second half. They missed the few scores in the first half, as well, frees they would normally put away. So there were misses on both sides, but a swirling wind too. But there’s no doubt about it. It was a game in my view we should have won, and we will learn from that.”

McIver wasn’t getting hung up on where Derry need to improve for the semi-final, other than admitting there is plenty of room for it.

“We knew Down were a good side, and it sets us up for a semi-final in a good way, knowing we have some work to do over the next few weeks. And with some of the frees, well, hopefully the referee will see the frees in a different light the next day. That’s as diplomatic as I can put it.

For Down, Monday’s qualifier draw will at least immediately refocus the attention, and McCorry was already looking forward to it. “We had five scoring opportunities in the last five minutes to win it. So we’ll be straight back into the training this week. I would be very pleased with the second half performance. So we will have a look at the DVD, we will do our analysis, and see where we have to improve for the qualifiers.”