Derry head to Croke Park this weekend looking for first Christy Ring Cup

Christy Ring Final

Derry vs. Meath

Croke Park

Saturday, 5pm

Johnny McGarvey believes a first Christy Ring Cup win at Croke Park this Saturday will ‘mean the world’ to everyone in red and white.

After what can only be described as a rollercoaster start to his time as Derry boss, McGarvey will lead his team out against Meath this weekend, hooping for the win which he feels will be just rewards for his players, who have shown great resolve to make it this far.

“I think that’s a fair enough remark to make,” he said. “We’re there because of the effort that the boys have put in and the work rate that they’ve put in. They left no stone unturned and this is just a testament to them, for me anyway.”

McGarvey and his players have had a time of it since he came in at the eleventh hour back in January, and on the back of turmoil, luck evaded the Oakleafers almost entirely in a league campaign that ended in relegation from Division 2A. But the Christy Ring campaign which has followed has revealed that with hard work and real belief, anything is possible.

“That’s a whole team job; that’s the whole backroom team and the players buying into what we’re trying to do,” McGarvey explained. “If you don’t have that, you’re wasting your time. From the day I got there, our players have been exemplary, in everything that they have done. They are so professional, and they are so riven. They want to work hard and they want to be successful. To be honest, it makes my job fairly easy.”

It took a while, but the first win eventually arrived against Sligo at Owenbeg towards the end of April, a significant moment for everyone, including the boss himself.

“Winning the Sligo match, especially in the manner that we won the Sligo match was just such a relief at that time,” he admitted.

“We had come close against Down in Ballycran, and we had come close in Omagh against Tyrone. We felt that had played reasonably well in spells in the league, and maybe not got what we deserved, but we didn’t get results which we probably could have got. So finally getting the win over Sligo probably had the lads thinking ‘Right, maybe we can push on here. Maybe we can make the Christy Ring final’. Fair enough we lost the next match to Meath, but at least we had that wee bit of confidence that we knew we could play.”

Highlight

The real highlight of the Christy Ring campaign was undoubtedly that incredible win in London, a 1-30, 4-19 victory which saw Derry come from behind to record a remarkable win. That experience in itself, should be enough to galvanise the players ahead of Saturday’s final according to McGarvey.

“Our performance in London was as good maybe as I’ve ever seen from a Derry team,” he insisted. “The character that we showed in London was unreal. The Mayo match was competitive for 15-20 minutes, but it petered out because they had nothing to play for and we were playing for a place in the Christy Ring final. It was alright now and I have to say that we’re happy with where we’re at.

“No matter how hard the match is at the weekend, I don’t think it will be as hard as that. London threw absolutely everything at us, as Meath will at the weekend, but the London match was totally different circumstances. More than once in the match, we looked dead and buried and we fought our way back into it. The character that we showed was first class. I think that’s more like what we’re about and where we’re at, at the minute.”

McGarvey now leads Derry into a third Christy Ring final, with defeats in 2015 and 2021 still fresh in the mind for the county’s hurling fans. But there is a real belief that it will be third time the charm for the county on this occasion.

“It would mean the world to all of us,” McGarvey stated. “Meath are no different to us because they will have done the hard work as well and they will go in full of confidence. But it would mean the absolute world to us and we truly believe that we have worked hard enough to win this match and we’ll give it absolutely everything we have on the day.

The boys are looking forward to it, but we’ve been very clear; we’re not going down there to do the tour. We’re going there and our only focus is to win the Christy Ring.”