NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE FOCUS ON DERRY: KEITH DUGGANtalks to Derry manager Damian Cassidy who wants his side to play with their heart on their sleeve

WHEN DERRY played run-and-gun against Kerry in a thrilling National Football League final last May, it promised much for the summer ahead. The football pedigree in the Oak Leaf County had never been in question; even during a decade of Ulster football dominated by Armagh and Tyrone, Derry were always regarded as the ones-most-likely-to, the sleeping giant waiting to erupt.

Last year’s league victory promised much. But yet again, the Derrymen flattered to deceive – six weeks later, their conviction disintegrated when they were confronted with a forceful Fermanagh display. History repeated itself. Derry embarked on a so-so qualifying campaign and the season ended in disillusionment and another managerial resignation, with Paddy Crozier leaving having given the job his best shot.

NOBODY IS MORE keenly aware of the pattern that has emerged from Derry’s recent football seasons than Crozier’s successor, Damian Cassidy. The Bellaghy man took the post with the expressed intention of rectifying Derry’s spluttering championship record. Although they appeared in All-Ireland semi-finals in 2001 (under the late Eamonn Coleman) and 2004 (under Coleman’s old sparring partner Mickey Moran), they have failed to make the expected impact in Ulster, last winning a provincial title in 1998.

This weekend sees a reprise of last year’s league final, with an in-the-mood Kerry side visiting Celtic Park. It is Cassidy’s third league match as Derry manager and although his team has made a perfect start, this meeting with the Kingdom offers him a chance to reflect on the broader goal for the season. But if last year left Derry football with even one valuable lesson, it must be that beating Kerry in the league is about that and nothing more.

“It is a game we are looking forward to, of course,” he says. “But we are not foolish enough to think it is a big game in the overall scheme of things. It is a league game, two points for a win. Come the championship, it will have zero effect on anything. But at the same time, I recognise Kerry bring the glamour that is associated with their game and for our supporters, it is nice to be playing against that kind of opposition on their home patch. A win would be great! But at the same time, I won’t be getting carried away with a win or a loss.”

Although he points out he is a novice at this level, the appointment of Cassidy has brought a sense of renewed optimism to Derry football supporters. He is most readily associated with Derry’s brightest football era in the early 1990s, when he was a prized and creative left-wing forward on the All-Ireland winning team of 1993.

He came through the well-worn graduation halls of Derry football: St Patrick’s Maghera and Bellaghy nursed him and he played on the 1983 Derry minor team that won the All-Ireland. He was playing senior for the county by the following year and always looked a likely managerial candidate, operating as a selector with Coleman when the Derry icon returned to manage his native county in 2000.

Cassidy guided Bellaghy to the Derry championship in 2005 but his most eye-catching feat was leading Tyrone club Clonoe O’Rahilly’s to the senior title in 2008. It was their first Tyrone title since 1991 and they swept the board, despite having no established county players on the side. Perhaps that experience persuaded Cassidy that reputation only counts for so much because he has been fearless in his selection policy so far.

He used the McKenna Cup to audition many Derry club footballers and brought nine into his spring panel. For his first two league games, he picked two bold and callow looking teams and was rewarded with impressive wins, against Mayo and Westmeath.

He had gone on the record to state there are no “guaranteed” places on the Derry team and he believes in using this league to try to reinvigorate the style of football that the senior side will play under his watch. Already, forward James Keilt and Paul Carton, whose composure and vision at wing back is reminiscent of Paul McFlynn, have caught the eye.

THE BIG SIGNIFICANCE of the 16-point haul against Westmeath was that it did not come courtesy of another supernova display from Paddy Bradley. For both matches, Cassidy has opted to start without Derry’s most feared marksman and lived to tell the tale. The old adage if you stop P Bradley, you stop Derry may not hold true this summer. Derry are developing options in attack. In addition, they have monstrous physical strength and experience around the midfield sector.

Kerry will offer the sternest test yet for whatever defensive unit Cassidy opts for. He is clear about the way he feels Derry will have to develop if they are to compete for major honours. “You look at the last two years in the championship and how the game is developing in general. Pace and mobility over the ground are an essential ingredient,” he contends.

“I felt there wasn’t enough of that in Derry teams – certainly a lot of good, strong players but that comfort on the ball was something we needed to improve on. You do need to have strong physical players in certain areas. But today’s game is also about defending and attacking in numbers. Tyrone are the blueprint. There is no point pretending they are not. Their players interlink and change and Mickey (Harte) talks about being able to play players in various positions without upsetting the team, that they are not upsetting the players. That is what you look to bing into your squad.”

LIKE MANY DERRY football people, he was dismayed at the nature of Derry’s exit from the Ulster championship last summer. It was not so much losing to Fermanagh that rankled as the tame acceptance of the defeat. Glaring inconsistency of that kind has troubled this generation of Derry footballers. Cassidy knows it is a tag they can only shake off with a succession of big summer performances and although he has ideas about how to achieve that, he acknowledges it is difficult to explain why Derry teams have fallen flat.

“Well, look, if I was Mick O’Dwyer and had the years of experience he has had and have been through the wheel, I might be better placed to answer that question. You know, this is my first experience of managing a county team and I haven’t been through that minefield of managing a championship side. And I am acutely aware that that is the difference that I have to bring to this situation.

“I have made no bones about the fact my emphasis is going to be on the championship. We may not ultimately win the championship or get as far as we feel we have the potential to get but the one thing we do want to see is whenever they go out and play, they go out with their heart on their sleeve. That is what our supporters expect and demand and I don’t think that is unreasonable. If we do that, at least our supporters will know that players have given it their best shot and they won’t be as bitterly disappointed as they would be as in comparison to going out like a lame duck.”

Seasoned Kerry players have already declared they are playing for their places as much as for league points. Cassidy has established a similar mindset in Derry. In a way, this is a match between two counties hurting for very different reasons. For that reason, it should have an edge.

Tasty as this match in Celtic Park promises to be, Cassidy has been alarmed by the havoc the experimental rules have wreaked on his team. They brought about a nightmare beginning to his role. In the first 20 minutes against Mayo, Derry’s entire full-back line had been yellow-carded. As a natural attacker, Cassidy understands the grievances of forwards who find themselves restricted by the dark arts that veteran defenders can bring to bear. But he is dismayed at what he believes to be the targeting of physical but clean play.

“I do understand the rationale behind this. But to see a player punished for going to win a hard ball and tackling with the correct technique – maybe because he happens to be stronger than his opponent is something I cannot come to terms with. There is no doubt the tackling element of the game has been poisoned.”

He laughs when asked what his old mentor, Mr Coleman, would have made of it. “Well, Eamonn certainly enjoyed the passion of the game. There is a wee bit of that, I think, that has been diluted.”

Some of the flavour may return in Derry tomorrow.