Double-header is a double opportunity for Derry

Tiernan Lynch feels he and his team have a point to prove this weekend in a potentially season-defining double-header against Shelbourne and St. Patrick’s Athletic at the Brandywell.

A third of the way into the 2025 season, Derry City are lower than many expected in seventh place, with the Candystripes only able to string successive wins together once so far. Fortunately, however Derry City is one of many teams struggling for consistency this season, and as a result they sit just three points joint league leaders Drogheda United and Galway United.

With the champions up next followed by Stephen Kenny’s title hopefuls, the true extent of Derry City’s progress will perhaps be seen for the first time since Lynch took charge at the club.

“They just keep getting bigger and bigger but that’s what we want coming off a disappointing Friday night,” the manager said. “We’ve had a good week and we have the element of a point to prove now to ourselves.

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"We felt like we let ourselves down (at Waterford) on Friday night and we felt like we let the fans down on Friday night. It was a below par performance that we can’t shy away form and w have to take it squarely on the chin and try and put right.”

Back in February, Lynch and his new squad suffered a baptism of darkness and fire at Tolka Park, with a floodlight failure unable to prevent City from going down 3-1 to the champions. Lynch is hoping that his players are more switched on this time around.

“It was our first game and I definitely hope and pray that we’ve improved since then,” he stated. “It’s a game we’re actually looking forward to because it’s a good challenge for u and it’s a good opportunity for us to measure where we are compared to the first game of the season.

Lynch admits he is still getting to learn the full extent of his players’ capabilities, with the performance and defeat at Waterford something of a shock.

“Yeah, disappointed, but nobody was more disappointed than them,” he said. “The big thing which we talked about was the manner in which we conceded the goals, which has been a bit of an Achilles Heel for us so far. We’re giving up soft goals rather than teams having to work overly hard to break us down, and that’s something that we’re looking at and working on. They are an honest bunch, they are working hard and no-one wants to get better more than them. We just have got to keep trying to improve.”

Lynch admitted that there could be some good news on the injury front with Pat Hoban, Sadou Diallo and Ben Doherty all likely to return to training in some capacity next week.

“(Cameron) Dummigan will be another eight weeks I think,” he revealed. Pat (Hoban) should be hopefully back training next week; Ben Doherty will hopefully be back training in some capacity next week. (Sadou) Diallo will be hopefully be back in some capacity next week also, so even those three alone will give you a whole different perspective and give us other options which is ideally what we need.”

The disappointment of Waterford could be quickly forgotten if the Candystripes produce two good results over the next few days, and Lynch is hoping his team can be the one to find the form which seems to have escaped most teams so far this season.

“I think that’s probably been the disappointing part for us’, that we just can’t get that run of consistency.

“I think a lot of the teams in the league are probably scratching their heads and saying the same things. It shows you the quality in the league from top to bottom where they are all taking points off each other and I think any team that can find the consistency first will be the ones that will probably move away.”