Derry better equipped for promotion bid but taking nothing for granted says Rory Gallagher after Meath victory

Derry made unenviable history last year when they missed out on promotion on 11 points, a tally which would have guaranteed Division One football in any other year of the modern league format. That memory will ensure that despite making it three wins from three with Saturday's emphatic victory over Meath, Gallagher will ensure no one loses focus.

"Any day you defeat Meath as comfortably as we have beaten them is a sign of progress but look, there's also a small bit of deja vu," explained the Derry manager after Saturday's 2-15 to 1-07 victory.

"We were here last year and didn't capitalise so you can never look too far ahead. We'll just look forward to the next number of days preparation and training. We know if you are going to perform at a very high level then you have to do things very well consistently, that's the challenge for us.

"Look, I'm a lot happier with our preparation this year than I was last year. We were fairly disjointed going in to round four and round five last year even though we were winning games.The standard of opposition is better this year but the challenge for us to to keep getting better. At times we were tonight but at times we were sloppy too.

"I think there are still four or five teams in the mix for promotion so we have to go to Kildare and look for a massive performance again. It is a fairly unique challenge against a team that would consider themselves Division One and were very unlucky to go down last season but we can look forward to it."

The weekend victory over Colm O'Rourke's previously unbeaten Royals was about as emphatic as it could have been, goals from Ethan Doherty and Niall Toner helping turn the second half into little more than an Oak Leaf training session

"Yeah, we got a much better performance but we had hoped to get it," added Gallagher, "Listen, it was nice to have an awful lot of the hard work done by half-time and in a position were you were never likely to lose the game.

"We did really outclass them and I was delighted with that and I don't think being 10 points up in the first half flattered us, it was good. It was a step up in class to a degree but I think we answered it very well but as we would have expected.

"Look, I would have expected the trajectory we are on to be very positive and I would expect us to be able to win games like this but I'm delighted we won it in the style we did on a night that wasn't easy to play football.

"Our only driving force is that we want to be better and we want to play at a phenomenal level; we want to play in an energetic, exciting environment. That's the challenge for us. Part of that is promotion but we can't look at that, we just have to look at trying to beat Kildare next week."

The challenges keep coming for Derry with what looks another pivotal fixture next weekend when the Oak Leafers make the trip to Newbridge to take on a Kildare team who defeated Clare 0-16 to 0-15 on Sunday.

"They are all tough and going down to Newbridge is daunting," added Gallagher, "Obviously they haven't had the start they wanted and we will keep an eye on what they do in Ennis but they came away from the Dublin probably feeling they were in a good place but , look, the league is full of ups and downs, even within a game, so the challenge for us is to bring the hunger and the passion, take the learning from this and be smart."