Derry should relish Ulster Championship chance against Armagh says Rory Gallagher

Rory Gallagher says he’s relishing Sunday’s return to ‘old school’ knock-out championship football against Armagh and a chance for Derry to prove they belong at a higher grade of football.

The Oak Leafers go into Sunday’s quarter-final clash in Celtic Park as outsiders against an Armagh side that clinched promotion to Division One last week, not that Gallagher has ever paid much attention to pre-match labels.

“I don’t read much into that to be honest. From when the draw was made we were always going to be underdogs and I think had even Armagh been relegated and us promoted, we would still have been labelled underdogs,” said the Derry manager.

"In the overall scheme of things I would much prefer to be favourites because it means there is a recognition that you are the better team but it’s up to us to change that perspective on Sunday. Quite rightly Armagh will be on a high but while Division One is a great accomplishment for them, they will have moved on from that very quickly.

“I certainly don’t feel any inferior on a personal level. I don’t feel it from the team when they go out and I don’t feel it from the players. We have seen Slaughtneil’s success and there are a huge amount of Slaughtneil and Glen players in the panel at the minute. Then you have the likes of Enda Lynn and Niall Loughlin from Greenlough, Conor McCluskey from Magherafelt, people who have tasted success.

“When our players pull on the club jersey they are as good as anything else in the country in their positions and I’m starting to see very positive signs when they pull on the county jersey. That’s why Sunday is another huge day for us and a chance to move forward again.”

Gone for 2020 is the two months build up with managers such as Gallagher and Kieran McGeeny or Armagh turning teams around in just seven days from the end of the league, something Gallagher admits is a new experience.

“Generally, you would have a five or six week lead into an Ulster Championship game and a very concentrated effort on the opposition,” the Derry manager admitted, “We didn’t have that this year. We would have had training camps with the focus on the opposition and we didn’t have that either. Even with the whole social distancing rules due to the virus, it’s not as easy to do video analysis so this year has been a new way of working.

“I would certainly prefer no virus and working the way we did before. Some people like working from home but I don’t like to work apart from the players but we think we made the most of the break, we feel as if we have done an awful lot right.

“We have a real buoyancy within the group at the minute. There is confidence in it and it is enjoyable to see the boys spending time in each other’s company and playing better together and starting to build relationships. That is going to be a key part of us performing at the weekend.”

And Gallagher admitted he has nothing but respect for the job McGeeney has done for Armagh after guiding them back to the top flight.

“I have come up against him a lot and he had a phenomenal playing career. You would have looked on with envy. He was a phenomenal leader and Armagh, in my opinion, get unfair criticism and so does he.

“He has been involved for seven years or so and they way they have built over that period of time, they’ve had definite setbacks, but if you look back at his career he got nothing easy and it is the same in management. You have to put your head down and grind it out.

“He has the support of the Armagh people and I can understand why because in Division One, you are getting in with the teams that have dominated provincial championships for the past six or seven years. It is the only place to be, I can understand that from my time with Donegal.

“No disrespect to the lower divisions, but the excitement coming up on a weekly basis when you have maybe 7,00 or 8,000 Dublin or Mayo fans arriving at your home venue, it’s fantastic. Obviously then you have the test of a squad at that level which is massive and it’s great credit to them to have got there.

“I came across Armagh in 2015 with Donegal and there are a number of those players still there and they have brought in the likes of the two O’Neills who are huge players. The likes of Aidan Forker, Mark Shields, Rory Grugan, Jamie Clarke, those players have stuck with it through some tough days and I would admire their resilience.”

Another first for 2020 will be the lack of fans at a fixture which would normally have attracted upward of 10,000 supporters.

“I have played on some lowly days when you are being beaten well and you wish there was nobody there!” laughs Gallagher, “Listen, it will be a strange dynamic. Even the pitch, Celtic Park is in brilliant nick but you never know with the way the weather is at this time of year.

“It’s back to old school knockout, like the U21 competition I was involved in five or six years ago with Donegal. There you just looked to try to get over the first game. I don’t think anyone with the exception of Dublin - even Kerry can’t with playing Cork - but no one else can look any further than the first game. That’s the same for Armagh, the same for Monaghan-Cavan, Donegal-Tyrone, you are looking to simply get over that first game and gain some momentum. At the end of the day, after these first round of games, half the county will be out of the championship.

“The break did us no harm whatsoever. We got a lot of bodies back and refreshed. It gave us a chance to get our best team together. We don’t see ourselves as a Division Three team, that’s the reality. We think we are better than that but unfortunately we weren’t good enough to come out of it this year.

“We were very unlucky up in Newry against Down even though we weren’t anywhere near our best at that point in the year but that’s up to us to prove on Sunday which is a starting point. We certainly don’t see ourselves as a team inferior to many in the country.”