Carrick 'absolutely not' a guaranteed win for City of Derry

Carrickfergus vs. City of Derry

Saturday, 2:30pm

Richard McCarter has admitted he hasn’t even looked at the league table yet this season as City of Derry head to Carrickfergus tomorrow hoping for their fifth win in seven games in all competitions.

It has been a very decent start to the campaign, and victory this week at bottom of the table Carrick could see Derry move up to fourth place in Ulster Championship One.

With almost 200 points to their name in those seven games so far, it is widely expected that City of Derry will win at Carrick, who sit in last place with five defeats from five. But that is adamantly refuted by McCarter, who ix expecting one of the toughest challenges yet for his team.

“We can’t approach any game like that,” he insisted. “That’s why this weekend probably poses a bigger challenge than las week because people will think that, they’ll expect us to win and we’ll be favourites going into it.

“We have been in Carrick’s position before and we know too well that all it takes is one big performance or one big result to kickstart your season, and I certainly don’t want to be a statistic this weekend or help to get Carrick’s season on track.

“We just have to go up with the mindset and concentrate on ourselves and try to play well, and if we play well, we’ll win the game. But we’ll have to raise the levels a wee bit, and we’re missing a few in the backs this weekend, so that’s going to make things even more challenging for us. It’s got a tough game written all over it and it’s one we’ll have to be focused for.”

Derry head into this game on the back of a very narrow Irish Junior Cup win over Connemara at Judges Road. The 31-29 victory was welcome, but the performance left a lot to be desired according to the Head Coach.

“It was maybe dramatic in terms of the scoreboard, but it wasn’t a great game from our point of view,” McCarter reflected. “We sort of struggled for the first time this year to get any kind of flow into the game in terms of our attack. It was partly down to us being off the boil a bit, but Connemara were a good side. They played good attacking rugby and they put us under pressure with their defence as well.

“But when you can score 30-odd points and win the game when you haven’t been at your best, we’ll have to take that as a massive positive. We’re just delighted to be through to the quarterfinal, and if we want to advance further, we’ve got to be better than we were on Saturday.”

Successful

Yet that ability to win whilst playing ell is the mark of any successful team.

“We have been playing well this year, especially in attack we’ve been really fizzing at times,” McCarter acknowledged. “I suppose in a way, we were maybe due a wee bit of an off-game. We’re not going to play at our scintillating best week in and week out, so it’s really important, if we are off the boil, that we can grind out results, and that was a good example of it on Saturday against a very good team Thing have been going well and it’s good to get the results, and this Saturday poses a different challenge for us.”

City of Derry are still without their first away win in the league having lost at Enniskillen and Ballyclare, so there would be no better time for that to change than this weekend.

“In fairness, looking at the table, Enniskillen and Ballyclare are first and second,” McCarter said. “They were massive challenges for us in themselves, and I’m glad that those two games are out of the ay now because they still have to come to Judges Road. Home or away, we want to win.

“Saturday won’t be easy. We went to Carrick twice last year, once in the league and once in the cup and they caused us problems, and it took an 80-minute performance to get over the line against them. We expect that type of game again against them, but it’s one we have to win one way or another.”