IT'S FINALLY HERE! Derry's Shane McEleney casting his own shadow!

Shane McEleney believes he has justified Ruaidhri Higgins’ decision to bring him back to Derry City after seven years away.

The 32-year-old arrived back at the Brandywell in December 2021 and went on to play in 36 of a possible 43 games. That stat in itself showed how much faith the manager had in him in what was the club’s most successful season in 10 years.

“I think Ruaidhri said in his very first interview whenever I signed – he said, first of all I’m not signing Shane McEleney because he’s Patrick McEleney’s brother and I think that was a really good thing for him to say in terms of my confidence,” he admitted. “I could kick on from that and thankfully I did and hopefully now I can try and improve on last year.

“I loved every minute of it last year and obviously to top it off, winning the cup made it a successful season for the whole group. If we can all try and strive for more, I think this group is more than able for it.

"We have got good depth in the squad now and we all should individually be striving for more, individually and collectively. It has been a good pre-season so I’m feeling good personally and I’m feeling good about the squad too.”

There is no doubt that Shane’s brother Patrick will go down as one of the most successful players in League of Ireland history when the time comes for him to retire, but never once has Shane felt he has been playing in his brother’s shadow.

“I don’t think of it that way,” he said. “Defenders never get much praise anyway; if I was an attacker or a midfield player it would be different. Patrick has been a top player around this league for many years and he has got the trophies to prove it. For me personally, it’s just good to play with my brother; when you’re playing with your brother week in and week out, he’s not just your team mate, he’s your blood so there’s a good personal aspect to drive each other on in terms of our performances so it's good.”

Clean sheets

Derry City’s defensive performance last season significantly strengthen following the arrival of Mark Connolly from Dundee United. Connolly and McEleney provided the backbone of a defence which ended the season with an impressive 18 clean sheets.

“I would agree 100%,” he acknowledged. “I think whenever we lost Eoin (Toal) we had to get someone in, and to be fair the recruitment from the gaffer has been great; Mark has been a brilliant asset for us since he’s come in. Between him and myself and Camron McJannet, there has always been good competition for places, and I think that keeps every individual on their toes which is good for the squad.”

McEleney believes that winning the FAI Cup last season will give players not only the experience of success, but the hunger to achieve even more.

“I think it was a first trophy for a lot of players,” he reflected. “Brian Maher, Cameron McJannet etc and it was my first trophy in a long time as well. You want more having got a taste of it.

"You want that feeling of success, there’s no better feeling, so that keeps everybody driven and keeps everybody hungry and I think you could see that in pre-season because it’s been vey good. The standard has been high in training and we had a good week away in Spain.”

While Europe and an FAI Cup winning campaign is certainly a success, McEleney believes that it is easily forgotten just how close City did push Rovers throughout the 2022 season.

“We put up a good fight last year,” he insisted. “We went on a really good run at the start of the season; every team has their blip and Rovers had theirs as well. It’s just trying to maintain that if we can. If we can start the season on fire again it will be great for us. We weren’t a kick of the ball away from it last year.

"Every time we played Rovers it was a tightly congested game every game, and we bettered them on more than one occasion. We respect every team in the league; we know it’s a tough league and teams around the league are getting stronger, and while we’ll respect everybody, we won’t fear anybody either.”