Meenagh cites ‘plenty to work on’ despite convincing 13-point quarter-final win

Ciaran Meenagh summation of Derry’s quarter-final victory over a pretty toothless Antrim side was pretty spot on.

“The thoughts are just that we have the win. It was never going to be easy. It was sort of a no-win situation.

“Antrim came with a very definite plan and we knew what that plan would be in terms of frustrating us in their attack and play. They came with a very deliberate tactic on their own kick-out as well.

“The most frustrating thing is just what we left behind us, particularly in the first half in terms of goal chances.

“We didn’t play challenge games in that period. We did a block of training and I think we’ve got the players up to speed physically. There’s just a bit of rust there in terms of the intricacies of our team play.

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“It’s a difficult game to prepare for in that regard,” he explained. “It’s a no-win situation, isn’t it? If everything went perfectly and you won a game like that, that wouldn’t set you up well either.

“It’s just a matter of playing the game, winning the game, brushing yourself down and getting on the road again and getting ready for two weeks’ time. So, plenty to work on.”

The Derry boss admitted his side were wasteful at times. “I suppose the obvious one is you’ve created loads of goal chances, which is a very pleasing thing. It would be worse if you weren’t creating them, but you’ve got to nail them.

“In particular, the levels will go up substantially now in our next game and we’ll take a look at that tomorrow. I’m confident that we will improve for the next day and we will need to.”

Meenagh was happy to heap a little praise on perennial top scorer and centurion Shane McGuigan.

“A first debut for Shane McGuckin and 100 appearances for Shane McGuigan - 100’s a fair innings. That’s a fair innings, especially when he’s only 28 years of age. It’s fair going and the scoring that he has done in that time as well.

“Brendan Rodgers is in that 100 club,” he continued, “and so is Niall Toner, and Conor Doherty will come into that. Hopefully, if we can win a few more games, they’ll come into that before the year’s out as well.

“That’s a fair bit of experience in your team. Those lads have played a lot of football, especially the likes of Ethan Doherty and Paul Cassidy, who are still in their early to mid-twenties. They’re well up on the 70 or 80 appearances as well. Those are all positive things.”

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The Derry manager provided an updated on injured players Dan Higgins and Matthew Downey. “Dan’s got a bit of a hamstring strain. He’ll be in a rush to be back the next day, but Matthew should be back.

“Hopefully it looks like we’ve got everybody else through there injury-free. We’ll be training hard this week again. We don’t know what our plan will look like yet, but outside of that we’re fairly strong.”

Meenagh signed off already casting his focus to the provincial semi-final. “I’m happy that we’re in the next round, but let’s be real - what we left behind us and some of our attacking play would be frustrating.

That’s a good way to feel because we’ll take a good look at that and I think we’ll improve from it.”