Derry hurlers welcome Meath for crunch league game

First up is Meath who visit Celtic Park this Saturday (4pm) needing two points themselves in a Division in which five of the seven teams are still looking over the shoulders anxiously at the two relegation spots.

Kerry, Donegal and Meath all sit on four points with Derry on two and Tyrone propping the table as they await their first points of the season. As it stands four could be the ‘magic number’ but the Oak leaf boss admits Derry cannot be relying on score difference.

"I'm not sure you would need two wins but you'll definitely need one," explained the Lavey man, "And if you do only get one it is going to come down to score difference or head-to-head. It's going to be out of your hands with only one win and if it came to score difference we would go down.

"The way we look at it is, if we have four points from these last two games then we wouldn't have to worry about it but our focus is solely in Meath. To be honest I haven't thought too much about the permutations because you can't afford to. We are totally focused on Meath and we’ll see what happens after that."

McGarvey is slowly getting back to something like a full quota to select from with Cahal Murray the latest to return from a casualty list that has hit Derry chances to date. The Derry manager knows his team will be underdogs again this weekend but he's hoping they can build on an improved display against Kildare two weeks ago.

"I think Meath are maybe a bit like we are at the minute," he explained, "They’ve had a big turnover in players in the two years since we last played.

"Tyrone gave them a fairly decent game and Donegal probably should have beat them. Now Meath had a man sent off after eight minutes against Donegal and they gave Kerry their fill of it as well at the weekend.

"So look, they're a good side. They're probably favourites to beat us but we’re very much focused on a performance. We need to build on the display against Kildare, be a bit more clinical up front and see where that takes us."

With the Christy Ring Cup hot on the heels of the league, every game from now to the season's end will have a championship feel to it.

"We were disappointed with the first three performances. Even the Tyrone game, we weren't happy with our performances levels at all. We were reasonably happy with how we upped it for Kildare even though we were well beat. It's just about building that momentum," adds McGarvey.

"I think everybody would’ve expected us to lose the three games we lost but probably not in the manner we did.

"So it’s about getting our performance levels up to where we are going to be competitive. Let's get this game down in to the last 10 minutes and make it a battle and then see where we’re at. Can we come out the right side of it then?

"If we can get a real performance then we’ll have every chance of winning. That's on us. We’re working hard and training is going well. We certainly haven't used the injuries as an excuse so it's in our own hands until Saturday after which hopefully it will still be."