Derry new boys have proved pedigree in McKenna Cup says Mickey Harte

With Glen busy cementing their status as the best club side in the country, Harte blooded a number of players en route to Derry defending their McKenna Cup title against Donegal in Healy Park on Saturday night. Diarmuid Baker, Donncha Gilmore, Cormac Murphy and Declan Cassidy were particularly impressive over the competition but there were also encouraging cameos from the likes of Dan Higgins and Ruairi Forbes across the four games, leaving Harte in a positive frame of mind ahead of the Division One campaign.

"It's always good to have more players who are capable of playing at the level you want," explained the Derry manager, "I suppose to prove that, they have to get experience of playing at that level.

"If you can introduce them in a competition like this, you can begin to see who can hold their own at this level. That gives them the confidence to believe they can to it as well That would be a really good outcome of this competition, that we have three or four more players that we could be into an intense kind of game in Division One in the National Football League and you would know they could do proud of themselves.

"It is very important for them," he added when asked if it was important for new players to experience victory in the McKenna Cup, "A number of new players that have not been around playing regular time in the past few years. A number of them have come in and shown they are well capable of doing that

"It is the level it is at now. It's a subsidiary competition, nobody has had their full hand out, so to speak, so you have to factor that in; that when we hit Division One and hit Tralee next week it is a different story. It is going to ask a lot more of us."

The only negatives from another impressive display was the loss of Eoin McEvoy to injury and a second half red card for Brendan Rogers whom Harte felt was unlucky.

"Brendan was puzzled by what happened to him and I was puzzled as well. I just saw him shaking a man off and heading off again," explained Harte.

"After he caught the ball and was fouled. He went to drive off. I didn’t even know that he had contacted anybody in so doing. If it was, it would’ve been accidental. Brendan wouldn’t be like that, he is a real honest player. He took the ball and wanted to get forward. Maybe he drove off, I didn’t see it. He is puzzled anyway why he got a red card."