CITY OF DERRY vs. OMAGH
Craig Thompson Stadium
Saturday, 2:30pm
If the final whistle had sounded at exactly 80 minutes in both AIL games so far, City of Derry would be sitting top of Division 2C. But rugby doesn’t work like that, and as a result, the Judges Road team are amongst the teams at the bottom still looking for their first win.
It has been a sore two week for the City of Derry players and staff who have been punished severely for even the slightest errors in judgement.
Against Bruff two weeks ago, Derry were seconds from an opening day win, only to lose it with the very last kick of the game. The performance was much-improved at Skerries last Saturday, a five-try performance setting them up for a brilliant away win, only to lose it once gain in added time at the end of the game.
At the minute, Derry’s only luck is bad luck.
“We just have to keep positive,” coach Richard McCarter said.
“The second half was very, very impressive on Saturday so we’ve got to take belief and heart from that, especially going into this weekend’s game against Omagh. We have got to be confident and just trust our defensive work and attacking play.
“If we play the way we did in the second half against Skerries for the full 80 minutes this week then we’ll be hard to beat. At the minute though it’s quite hard to take that we should be sitting unbeaten, but we’re not. We’ll just have to learn from these small mistakes that we’re making.”
A derby game against Omagh could well be the perfect fixture for Derry, who, at this stage, just want the first win of the season out of the way.
“We’re certainly not at the panicking stage yet but it would be nice to get a victory to reflect the effort and the work rate that the boys are putting in,” McCarter continued.
“I say it all the time but in the All-Ireland league it is fine margins, and the past two weeks have proven that; you are two minutes away from being top of the league. This Saturday we need to put in a complete performance, it needs to be consistent throughout the entire 80 minutes because Omagh are a good side as we know. They beat us twice last year so it would be nice to get back to winning ways against them.”
Dominant Davy
A huge positive so far for City of Derry has been the form of David Graham, who followed up on a dominant performance against Bruff by scoring a sensational first half hat trick against Skerries on Saturday.
“To be honest if it wasn’t for Davy in the first half on Saturday it would have been a different game,” McCarter acknowledged. “We didn’t play particularly well in the first half but he got a first half hat trick which kept us in it. In the second half the biggest compliment I can pay to the boys is that Davy had a quiet second half because it was a more team orientated performance and he didn’t have to bail us out., He is in scintillating form at the minute and at this level, if he gets half a chance, he has the pace and power to finish it so he’s really important to us.”
Should Derry find themselves with a narrow lead with seconds on the clock this Saturday, McCarter is hopeful that the players can forget about what has happened in the two previous games.
“It’s a massive learning curve,” he admitted.
“We still do have a very young team, especially in the pack. We haven’t really been in this position where we have been leading with 30 seconds left but I would like to think that if we are in the same position this week we can close the game out better. We just have to be more composed. Everyone knows their role but it’s important when you’re trying to slow a game down and kill the clock that we know what we’re doing. I don’t think psychologically it will be an issue; we just have to learn from it and move on.”
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