NET PROPHET
After relying on Shane McGuigan, Mickey Harte’s Derry are rattling in the goals from all directions
WHEN Shane McGuigan won the Golden Boot award last year, finishing Championship 2023 as the top scorer, it provided ample evidence of a player at the top of his game. To stay ahead of David Clifford showed the level he was operating at. If it was hard to argue with his combined total of 2-52 across seven matches (a combination of 29 frees, one mark, one goal from a penalty and 1-22 from open play), some still did.
In fact, the scoring rate of one player was used as a stick to beat Derry with. That only fed the narrative of not enough scoring options up front and too much of an over-reliance on one player.
This spring, it’s as if the Division 1 league leaders have gone out of their way to make a mockery of any such idea.
Under Mickey Harte, Derry have four wins from four and double the points total of their nearest challenger. Significantly, no other team in the division matches their total of seven goals scored so far as they prepare to host Dublin this evening at Celtic Park.
It’s remarkable really that the seven have all come from seven different players — whatever the opposite is to Con O’Callaghan bagging a hat-trick against Kerry is, this is it.
And they have come every which way. When Conor Glass managed to lob the ball to the net against Tyrone, the Glen midfielder did have to field questions as to whether he really meant it.
Conor McCluskey had no such queries when the defender showed his versatility by raiding down the left wing against Monaghan and neatly sidestepping Jack McCarron to fire the ball through a thicket of bodies to the net. The next from Padraig McGrogan involved a lightning counterattack and thunderous finish from distance, while Conor Doherty again showed such composure to pick his spot in the same game.
As if to prove it wasn’t a fluke, Derry rattled in another three against Galway last weekend. This time, the first came from number six Eoin McEvoy from another raid down the centre of the opposition defence.
The second was a left-footed penalty from McGuigan, while the third involved a weave of passes before Paul Cassidy fisted the ball to the empty net at the back post.
Ahead of this evening’s eagerly awaited fixture then, it’s moved on from the narrative of ‘stop Shane McGuigan and go a good way to blunting Derry’s attacking edge’.
Indeed, it’s back to a different type of familiar plotline, one which revolves around whether Con O’Callaghan can be stopped after his explosive display against Kerry last Saturday night.
It is interesting to note how the league so far has been shaped by teams who have either made a habit of finding the net — or really struggled to do just that.
One statistic that jumped out during the week was that a Mayo starting forward hasn’t scored a goal from play in league or championship since Ryan O’Donoghue found the net against Donegal in mid-March of last year. That’s a period of nearly a year that covers 12 games — in six of those Mayo have drawn a blank.
Mayo’s opening round league win against Galway hasn’t served to paper over some old failings. While the attack was certainly economical in scoring on a wild and windy day at Salthill, the first goal was a banger from wing-back Eoghan McLaughlin, while the second came from the penalty spot via sub Cillian O’Connor.
Mayo host Roscommon this evening after a pretty abject outing against Tyrone when again their only goal came from an O’Connor penalty.
The same player may be the game’s all-time championship scorer but the top-10 list last summer featured no Mayo representative. Six different counties were represented in the top 10 by championship end — Derry (McGuigan), Dublin (Con O’Callaghan, Colm Basquel, Cormac Costello), Kerry (David Clifford, Seán O’Shea), Tyrone (Darragh Canavan, Darren McCurry), Cork (Steven Sherlock), and Louth (Sam Mulroy).
Before he stepped down after the agonising All-Ireland semi
No other team in the division matches their seven goals
Mayo host Roscommon after a pretty abject outing
final defeat by Kerry, Derry manager Ciaran Meenagh spoke of how they have made a concerted effort to develop their gameplan and particularly their attacking play.
‘We got to an All-Ireland semifinal last year, so it’s nice to get back there. We got promotion, won the McKenna Cup, and another Ulster title. I think there is some commentary out there that Derry aren’t among the elite teams, and that’s fair, but it’s our job now to get ourselves back and do ourselves slightly more justice than we did in last year’s semi-final.
‘Are we better? I don’t know. Time will tell. But we’ve had as equally as good a year if not better this year. Have we shown some progress in terms of development of certain aspects of our play? I’d like to think so, particularly in terms of how we’re attacking.
‘Those are things we looked at over the winter as a management team and that we’re practising. Do I see the players as having improved? I do. Have we got a stronger hand, a better bench? I think we have. Is there more confidence in the group because we’ve experience? Yeah, there is. But time will tell.
‘I think we have the potential but we still have it all to prove against the best.’
They are doing that right now under Harte’s guidance.
And proving a point about scoring options as they go.