Not exactly. This past week has actually taken a more unfamiliar tone. One that has contained more despondency - and indeed derision - than would usually be the case after a Derry defeat in the Championship. A tone that has questioned not only the current state of our senior football team, but also the very fabric of Gaelic Games participation in our county. Was last Saturday really Derry's Buddy Holly moment... the day the football died? Surely one 70-minute game isn't an accurate indicator of the current state of football across all levels in the Oak Leaf county?
After taking the temperature of the hotbeds, maybe there is an alternative view to the fickle reaction offered by last week's media outlets. A light in the dark perhaps, a ray of sunshine piercing its way through the blanket.
In order to find that chink of hope, it's necessary to assess the common criticisms levelled at football in Derry and try to figure out if we are really about to fall off the football map:
"Get rid of that manager! There's a better man for the job"
Okay, so let's recap and think about this. We've had Mickey Moran, Paddy Crozier, Damien Cassidy and John Brennan. Not a bad selection of coaches you might say. That's unless you are an Oak Leaf supporter of course in which case they 'know nuthin about fudball'. But it's fair to say each of these men were the best (and most popular) candidates for the job before they were appointed. We have a vicious blame culture at work which should be thought about carefully. Managers need time to stamp their ideas on a squad, and pressure from within the county to take it elsewhere certainly doesn't help.
"There's no strategy or vision for player development in Derry"
Where have we heard the word "strategy" recently? You might vaguely recall the launch of Derry GAA's new five year strategy. Most of us won't have either the time or inclination to read such documents (football is played on the pitch, right?), but at times like these, such strategies provide a certain level of curiosity.
It actually provides some degree of encouragement, once you wade through the usual blather. Conditioning was mentioned a number of times with respect to development squads and to the 18-21 age group, where it was mentioned that Derry would 'Develop a High Performance Academy focusing on 18-21 year olds'. Good stuff on the face of it. And this age-group in particular is an extremely important consideration. We've had successful Minor teams in 2002 and 2007, but haven't built on it. It would be fair to say that players are not being worked on effectively enough when they leave Under-18 level, resulting in them not being ready for senior football. It's encouraging to see firstly, that the powers-that-be are aware of this, but better that they are actually doing something about it.
"What are these development squads for anyway? They should be scrapped"
It appears that these squads have only properly evolved over the last two or three years. This year the development is both summer and winter (in the schools) based. There have been two pretty decent minor teams as a result. Well, the 2011 vintage busted against Fermanagh in the first round, but was certainly a good group of players on paper. But taking this year's team into the equation, the quality seems higher than it was, as even the casual observers of Derry minor teams will attest (and our Under-21s weren't a million miles off Cavan this year either). If we had the choice between nothing and squads of players playing together from 15/16/17/18 receiving professional advice and strength and conditioning programmes, Derry supporters would surely choose the latter.
Also, is it really a bad thing that young fellas get to know one another from across the county at an early age? Hopefully it will help to eradicate the parochial mentality that engulfs our club game - a criticism that is often levelled at our senior squad. There will be late developers and lads who fall back but sure that's all part of life. Everything has to evolve from somewhere. So do coaches if you think about it. We need our players and coaches doing the right things as early as possible, and hopefully this will eventually filter through across all levels.
"Fitness is a big problem"
It has probably struck you that there might be a link between injury and core strength. All the sports articles tell us that anyway. We all know the injuries we've had, not just this year but ongoing for as long as the mind goes back. But it looks like this is something we are also trying to address. By all accounts there was a fairly extensive counsultation process carried out before Anthony Begley was appointed the new fitness officer. A quote off the Derry website from the County Board might explain more:
‘We want the physical development of our players to be managed on a county wide level, from an early age, right up to seniors. It’s a vast area and why we put so much effort into finding the right person. We’re delighted to have Anthony on board and we look forward to the development and roll-out of his associated programmes across each geographical area of the county.’Again, it sounds like the right people are aware of our fitness and conditioning problems. Perhaps the Derry senior squad haven't benefited from this as yet, but in a few years we will see if our youth players can reap the rewards.
This strategy was in place long before the Derry players boarded the coach to Ballybofey and it is being implemented as we speak. For example, the Derry website advertises a meeting this week where parents of all those who take part in development squads are asked to attend to hear what apparently will be some kind of vision on their sons’ development.
"All them boys are interested in is bricks and mortar. Look at Tyrone, look at Donegal... What are they doing?"
By the sounds of it, they're all trying to copy Owenbeg! Despite the onslaught of deep recession across Western Europe. If the plastic collection buckets outside MacCumhail Park with 'Centre of Excellence fund' sellotaped to them were anything to go by, the O'Donnell men are looking to purchase a brick or two themselves. Good luck to them. The grants Derry received may not be as handy got in the future. It opens up a scenario whereby investment above and beyond our competitors might be possible in the future.
"Our Schools aren't even as successful as they used to be"
The success or failures of St Pat's Maghera are usually trotted out as a barometer for the health of Derry football. It's obviously more complex than that but let's run with it for the craic. In twenty years from 1976-1996 Maghera qualified for 18 out of 20 MacRory Cup finals, winning 11. In the next fifteen years (1996-2012) they qualified for two, winning one. You could say the malaise has been setting in for a while. But the schools have actually been performing reasonably well recently. St Mary's Magherafelt were a kick of the ball away from defeating double Hogan Cup winners St. Colman's in the 2011 MacRory Cup semi-final. St Pat's grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory in the 2012 final. At one point last year, nearly every Ulster Colleges 'A' football trophy that is possible to win resided in St Pat's.
As an aside, our Clubs haven't exactly been setting the world alight either. Post-1993, Derry club sides continued to be strong in the Ulster Club Championship culminating in a trio of successes with the last nearly ten years ago in 2003. Okay, we're in an era of Crossmaglen dominance, but did we take our eye off the ball right across the board?
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So, where does all that leave us? We all know these lines. Perhaps we've even thought them as we curse at the TV (let's face it, not many actually give the fellas on the teams the support they deserve). Yes, our shop window isn't the prettiest at the minute, but when taking a closer look at the evidence, it seems like there's plenty of people at work on the shop floor trying to improve the product.A senior team is the result of development undertaken anything up to ten years previous. With that in mind, anyone seeking to draw correlation between existing underage coaching structures and current senior results is conducting flawed analysis. Never in the history of Derry GAA has there been a long term strategy to develop players. On the face of it at least, there now is. There's a huge level of thought and understanding of what is required to drive Gaelic Games in Derry for years to come. It was there before Derry's senior footballers took to the field last weekend, and it will still be there regardless of how well we perform for the remainder of the summer.
There's a ubiquitous Mark Twain quote - that gets bandied about all too often - about an exaggeration of his death. It might be fairly appropriate on this occasion, but let's consider another of his words of wisdom: "A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval." It's about time we were patient about what is going on in Derry football. As we concluded in our analysis of last week's Donegal game, it might well appear to get worse before it gets better, but that doesn't mean we are in a hole we can't get out of. In fact, for once we seem to have the right thinking in place and are not solely reacting to events in the inter-county scene.
At the end of the day we still need talented players and coaches to fulfill our ambitions at the highest level, but there are structures in place to help them thrive and reach those lofty heights. At the very least we should give them a chance.
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