Mickey McCann praises the effort of his Donegal side despite their defeat to Derry

Donegal manager Mickey McCann said his side did not produce enough scores on the board to cause Derry any real danger as they fell to a seven-point defeat in O’Donnell Park. 

The Burt native is in charge of the county for his sixth season now and despite dominating large parts of the first half against the Oak Leaf County, the Donegal side did not have enough energy levels to create the same performance in the second 35 minutes, as Derry took control of the game and run out with a 2-20 to 0-19 point victory.  

“We were very happy at half-time, we maybe weren’t happy with what we had on the scoreboard considering we put in a big shift, but we made a few unforced errors to let Derry back into the game and from that, they got a soft enough goal from it. But overall, I thought we were every bit as good as Derry in the first half,” said McCann. 

“We worked so hard in the first half that we just couldn’t keep that tempo up in the second half due to the fact that Derry probably had more strength in depth.  

“Overall, it was a decent performance against a good Derry team.” 

While McCann was satisfied with his side’s performance against a strong Derry side, he blames the lack of goal chances created from his team as a major factor as to why his side never built up a confident lead or won the game. 

“Even if we were four or five points up at half-time, it would’ve given us a bit of comfort, even if they got a purple patch, but we just could never get that goal because Derry was so solid defensively. We never got into their danger area enough. 

“I think at this level you need to get one or two goals like they did to hurt teams and get a bit of daylight. You take the goals out of it, it’s only a one-point game.” 

The goal from Dara Mooney kept Derry in contention as they entered half-time with the scores level. But in the second half, Derry gained momentum, taking the lead with successive points from Cormac O’Doherty and Mooney, with Donegal going 23 minutes without a score. 

“It was a bad 20 minutes at the start of the second half for us, we had an early point, but after that, I think they hit five or six points in-a-row which we couldn’t recover from. We went 23 minutes without a score, which in hurling is never enough,” said the Donegal boss. 

“This Derry team, there as good a Derry team as I’ve seen since I took over the Donegal job. They’re probably favourites to win the league, so with that, I’m happy with the performance we put in considering the number of men we have missing.  

“I think we have 10 members from the Nickey Rackard final missing, seven of them were starters. So, I can’t complain about the effort these lads put in today.”