The situation in Derry looks to be beyond fixing. I was watching them on Sunday and they are miles away from being contenders.
Even if you ignore the scorelines from their last three games for a minute, they are showing so many signs of a team that has forgotten about what made them a force to be reckoned with in the first place.
[ Mickey Harte still standing in Derry despite rumours flying on social mediaOpens in new window ]
Any team can have a bad day. Any team can give away goals or miss chances or have a fella sent off. Intercounty football is a ruthless business and the other crowd are only too delighted to rub your nose in the dirt when you’re not fully tuned in.
So I wasn’t overly worried for them when Donegal gave them a hosing at the start of the championship. These things happen. Dust yourself down, fix the things that went wrong, move on. This championship structure doesn’t have a lot going for it but the one thing it gives everybody is the chance to fix the plane as they’re flying it. Losing in April was no reason to panic.
The difference now is that we have three games-worth of evidence. And far from fixing what went wrong against Donegal on April 21st, it’s worse they’re getting. Odhran Lynch’s GPS sprint numbers must be off the charts. He’s spent more of the championship running back towards his own goal than actually saving shots.
This is the big red flag with Derry. They’re doing stupid things and not learning from them. You can’t give away four breakaway goals in a championship game and pretend that nothing has happened. Any serious team sits down in the aftermath of that kind of humiliation and goes, ‘Right so, whatever else happens this year, that kind of goal doesn’t beat us again’. Make that your starting point and build from there.
Instead, what are we seeing? Goals, goals and more goals. Armagh scored three on Sunday as well as hitting the crossbar and their corner back fluffing a chance from three yards out. Time and time again, Derry are getting caught with Chrissy McKaigue as the only man back trying to back-pedal and defend against a 3-on-1.
Chrissy is nearly 35 – he’s around so long, even I played against him back in the day. It’s not fair on him to hang him out to dry like that. And when you watch them now after a big turnover, the body language is so different from the league final. They aren’t sprinting back, they’re jogging. It’s like they know the game is up at this stage.
The other massive alarm bell is their discipline. That’s two red cards in two games. I was completely baffled by Gareth McKinless’s one against Galway. Plenty of us have been that soldier over the years – you’re having a battle with a lad, you spot an opportunity with nobody watching, you take it and move away whistling a happy tune. Who me, ref? Nothing to see here.
But everybody surely knows that you can’t do that these days. If the ref doesn’t see you, the linesman will. And if the linesman doesn’t see you, the umpires will. And even if none of those seven pairs of eyes catch you in the act, The Sunday Game lads will get you before the weekend’s over. So what’s the point?
Ciaran McFaul’s one on Sunday was just as bad. He was only on the pitch 15 minutes as a sub and he already had a yellow card. Straight away, that put him at a disadvantage – Armagh knew they could run at him and he’d have to be very careful not to do anything stupid. But he wasn’t careful at all – Joe McElroy ran at him and he dragged him down, right under the nose of the linesman. He was nearly taking off his gloves before David Coldrick went to the book.
Discipline is a delicate thing. We’re all big ignorant gorillas at the back of it all. In the middle of a game, with all the emotion flying about the place, it’s very easy to decide that you’re in the mood to go around putting manners on fellas. But that’s not how you win All-Irelands. You have to slow your brain, think clearly, keep in mind what’s important. Whatever McKinless and McFaul were thinking, it wasn’t that.
There was one other small thing on Sunday that jumped out. When Derry took off Emmet Bradley, Conor Glass turned to the bench with his arms out, as if he was going, ‘What the hell is that about’? That’s your leader, your captain, your best player, openly questioning the management in the middle of a game. Again, even if you didn’t take one look at the scoreboard, that tells you something is badly wrong in that set-up.
I go back to the league game in February when Mickey Harte brought the Glen lads down to Killarney six days after winning their club All-Ireland. Managers pull this kind of stroke all the time – they’re under pressure to deliver results and they convince themselves they’re doing right by the players.
[ Mickey Harte’s gamble pays off as Derry outlast understrength KerryOpens in new window ]
I don’t doubt for a second that the Glen boys said they wanted to play that league game against Kerry. Of course they did. Harte was a new manager, they were on a high, they wanted to make sure everybody knew they were committed to the cause.
Jack O’Connor did the same by bringing back the two Cliffords earlier than he said he would after Fossa’s win the previous year. These managers all become obsessed with getting points on the board and making sure they’re not seeing headlines about being under pressure.
But it was very noticeable around that time that Dublin lost their first two league games and Dessie Farrell didn’t blink an eye. There was no panic button or anything like that. He left a load of his bigger players off until the end of the league. He didn’t try to rush anyone back.
[ Dublin make their move but mystery of Derry’s whereabouts deepensOpens in new window ]
Likewise with Pádraic Joyce in Galway, who must have been tempted several times during the league to push some of his injured players into giving him 15 minutes here or there. He was patient with them, knowing that the time that matters is in June and July.
Derry have arrived at the most important part of the year in tatters. They look mentally wrecked. They look like they didn’t refresh themselves at all in the month they had off after the Donegal defeat. They are loose and cranky and disorganised, all hallmarks of a team that is annoyed at itself and being badly managed.
I don’t see any chance of them rescuing this for an All-Ireland push.
