McKenna Cup games gave younger players vital experience - Mickey Harte

It’s always important to get hands on silverware and it’s vital to push on as far as possible in any competition. That was Mickey Harte’s take after Derry retained the McKenna Cup on Saturday evening in Omagh. 

To get four games ahead of the league opener in Tralee is a decent start before the real action begins as Derry play in the top flight for the first time since 2015. 

After wins over Cavan, Down and Armagh, there was the feel Saturday’s final - and a dress rehearsal to the championship opener - would be a better yardstick. And it was. 

“We knew that Donegal are a rejuvenated outfit,” Harte said. “They have Jim McGuinness there again and we know he has plenty of tricks up his sleeve. 

“We know he puts a lot of dedication into creating a team that is very difficult to play against.” 

Donegal won the toss and elected to play against the wind. Trailing just 0-5 to 0-3, they were in a decent position. 

“They were in control of the game,” said Harte, who pointed to Derry’s different focus after the break and their running game.  

“They are a good running game team and that’s what it took in the second half against the breeze.” 

It was all about control and creation, with the measure to take the right option. 

“We had to hold onto the ball to make sure you can finish with a dead ball or a score…I think our players did that very well,” Harte said. 

“I think it was also important to open up the gap. If they had started to close in on us again, they would’ve got momentum, they’d have got more energy and we’d have been on the end of a bad night.” 

Harte spoke of how he admired Derry’s progress in recent seasons to become a top four team. 

Now, being in among them at training, night on night, he has a deeper appreciation of the raw materials that led to the progress. 

“It is always good to have more players who are capable of playing at the level you want,” Harte said of the importance of building a deeper panel. 

“I suppose to prove that, they have to get experience of playing at that level. 

“If you can introduce them in a competition like this, you can begin to see who can hold their own at this level. 

“That gives them the confidence to believe they can to it as well.  

“That would be a really good outcome of this competition, that we have three or four more players that we could put into an intense kind of game in Division One in the National Football League and you would know they could do proud of themselves.”