City of Derry aim for first league win as Academy visit Judges Road

Mark Scott also returns in a timely boost for Head Coach Neil Beddow who has to plan without the services of Gary McKinley, Matthew McMonagle and winger Owen Hoyles.

Derry currently sit bottom of the Championship Two table after three defeats from three but the recent Junior Shield victory over Monaghan and last week’s performance against promotion chasing Carrick are real cause for optimism ahead of a game which will be Derry’s last league fixture until October 18th.

"We have three missing from last week's game," explained the Derry coach, "But it's a case of three out, three in for us and while we would love to have everyone ready, we’re not in a bad place either and we’ll be ready."

The Derry head coach admitted there has been some frustration at their failure to get off the mark but he stressed he would be concentrating on the positives from last weekend's encouraging display.

"Last week the guys showed a lot of heart. We had worked quite a bit on defence prior to it and for 70 minutes against Carrick I thought our defence was outstanding. We really limited a good Carrick side to very little throughout the game," explained Beddow.

"That was a positive but ultimately it resulted in the same outcome which was us not picking up the points. Look, performance wise it's something to build up and I'm really optimistic that if we can produce something similar this week against Academy that the boys could get across the lines and finally get the reward for the efforts they have put in to date."

The Belfast club are one win better off than Derry in eighth place after defeating Lisburn in between league defeats against Carrick and Grosvenor with Beddow admitting Saturday will be another step into the unknown for him.

"A couple of years ago they would have been very strong and were just pipped to the league title by Lurgan who got promoted to Q2," he added, "Last year they seemed to slip back a bit but they’ve started well enough with one win in three and a decent display against Carrick.

"We have a video of them against Carrick but similar to ourselves on opening day, the weather for the match was horrific, just as it was when we played Ards. It meant the day wasn't conducive to either side playing rugby so it's only of limited use.

"Listen, we'll take what comes forward from them. I'll try to get a few ideas from the video. They seem to have a decent front row that rotates on and off with a good No. 8 so, listen, we'll have a rattle and see how we go.

"We'll concentrate on ourselves and, again, we had a good training night on Tuesday and I’m optimistic, I'm buoyant. I'm looking forward to Saturday because, with the thought process of having a Saturday off on October 4th and a Junior Shield game on October 11th, the players know they can leave everything on the pitch with a wee bit of recovery time before the next league match."