Conor McCormack confident Derry City will bounce back in 2021

And the experienced midfielder certainly won’t allow a ‘horrible’ season to dampen his enthusiasm as he already looks ahead to representing the Brandywell club next season.

McCormack, who signed a two-year deal with Derry after leaving Cork City last December, admits one of the main reasons he rejoined the club was to compete in Europe.

Yet despite no European football to plan for next year, McCormack isn’t getting too down heartened and he’s confident the club will bounce back under Declan Devine next season.

“That’s why I came up here, because Derry City were in Europe, and the way they were going and the way Declan sets his team up.

“I know from playing against his teams, especially last year, they were very energetic and I like him on the sideline, his enthusiasm. I really wanted to play for him.

“That’s why I came up ultimately. I have another year left and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m sure we will get a good team together and I’m looking forward to pre-season already.”

Next season it’s hoped a Covid-19 vaccine will bring about some normality to football and allow the return of fans to stadiums.

It’s a hope McCormack is clinging to as a Brandywell Stadium bereft of supporters wasn’t what he or others had signed up for.

Explaining how difficult it’s been this season not being able to socialise or build a team rapport outside of training and matchdays, the Carlingford native admitted it’s been a real struggle.

It’s no coincidence that the successful teams this season have had continuity in their respective squads and the turnaround of players in the City camp undoubtedly left the club ill prepared for a season of unprecedented disruption.

“It’s been a very difficult season for us, especially there the last few weeks. We were locked up for two weeks then played two games over 48 hours without having been able to prepare properly.

“Then we went into another two weeks lockdown and didn’t have time to prepare properly for Sligo which was a really winnable game.

"We knew coming down it would be difficult but if we put in a good performance we would have a good chance to get to the semi-finals. It has been horrible. There’s no way of dressing it up. It has been very difficult for players.

“We have a lot of good players, technical players. Some lads have a lot of experience and some new lads came in, very exciting players.

"We saw that in pre-season but we didn’t get off to the best start. We got a bit of momentum and then there was the shutdown. We didn’t start well after the break and found ourselves in a difficult situation.

“We pulled it out of the bag with another couple of wins and were shut down again. So it was very hard to build momentum or team morale. There were no team bonding sessions as we were all separated away from the training area.”

Going into the cup quarter-final against Sligo on Wednesday with little time on the training pitch, it was a big ask for Derry but McCormack insisted they were confident they could produce a result.

“Coming into the game we didn’t have many days to prepare but I thought we played pretty well and were impressive. We had the clear cut chances to win the game.

"Unfortunately when it comes to a penalty shoot-out it’s a lottery and that sums it up now that we lost on penalties when we probably should’ve won the game.”

McCormack, who successfully smashed his penalty into the net in the 2017 FAI Cup for double winners, Cork City at the Aviva, was one of the first to volunteer to take a spot-kick on Wednesday night.

Conor Clifford expertly dispatched Derry’s first but after Junior Ogedi missed for Sligo and with the scores level as McCormack stepped up, he blasted his effort over the bar

“I’m captain of the team, I’m a confident player. I believe I could go up and score and was one of the first to put my hands up. I’ve hit ones before in cup finals and scored. I wanted to make good contact with the ball but unfortunately got underneath it.

“A few of the lads found it difficult as well. It was a difficult pitch but we can’t make excuses. We just didn’t have the luck.”

That’s been the story of Derry’s season really and McCormack is quite happy to draw a line under this year and set the record straight in 2021.