Glackin praises Derry minors efforts in Ulster Championship opener

Winning was the only currency in the Derry camp ahead of Saturday’s Ulster Championship opener and manager Kieran Glackin was full of praise for his squad’s efforts.

Down hit them with a stoppage time goal but Connail Campbell’s third point proved the winning score.

“The first round of the championship is for winning,” Glackin said. “A one-point win is no different than and four or five-point win, but I suppose we probably would have liked to have come out a wee bit more comfortably. We were four up with 65 minutes on the clock and it seemed a very late go on the last kick of the game but it's all about winning. We had talked to the boys through the week in the preparation we prepared really well.

“We knew that Down we were going to come with a very tough challenge and we talked about it's a one-point win or a 10-point win, it's all about getting to the next round.”

Derry won the toss and chose to play against the win in the first half. After going 0-3 to 0-1 in arrears, a well-constructed and finished goal saw the Oakleafers into a lead they never lost. I thought we'd done very well against the breeze in the first half because we were actually getting three up at half time,” Glackin added.

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“We probably would have liked to have been in a position where we could have went on in the second half and made it a bit more comfortable for ourselves.

“Every time we got it to three or four points, Down seemed to come back. We couldn't stretch that gap any more than four (points). If we had got it five or six, we might have made it a bit easier for ourselves, but Down were hard to put away.”