City of Derry face huge NW derby trip to Letterkenny

The Donegal club, sitting two places and three points behind Derry in the league table, have a distinctly Derry flavour to their coaching set up with former Judges Road favourite Adam Bratton stepping up to Head Coach this season and enlisting former City of Derry Head Coach Richard McCarter as his backs coach and Neil Burns, brother of current Derry forward coach, Tom, as his player-coach.

And even if injury has severely restricted Burns' appearances for Letterkenny this year, there will still be the likes of Jamie Millar, Adam Marley and Cein McColgan lining out for the home side against the club they used to play for.

It brings some added spice to what is the first of back to back clashes between the clubs with Derry Head Coach Neil Beddow acknowledging there is more than simply points at stake.

"We were just a bit off last week against Lisburn," explained Beddow after the 14-10 defeat, "Maybe there was a bit of complacency, maybe the earlier kick-off or maybe it was just a variety of things but we have to look at ourselves first and foremost because ultimately on Saturday, we weren't good enough. "But Saturday is a good opportunity to get back on track. You have Adam Bratton, an ex-City of Derry player, who is head coach down there, there are three or four ex-Derry players with Letterkenny so there's a lot on this, not just in-game situation but also in club situation. "Even the fact that if we want to try and recruit people moving forward i the future, we want people coming to City of Derry rather than giving other clubs like Letterkenny and Strabane a thought process. Listen, Letterkenny is a local derby and we've got to go into the game positive.

"They will be coming into it with good confidence. They were two from two against Grosvenor, a really good win for them, so listen, going to their place, the onus is on us to upset the applecart."

Last week's surprise defeat at Lisburn was Derry's first in five league games in what was their first fixture following three free weekends for the 'Green & Black'. Beddow's options were limited by injury and unavailability and he's still expected to be without Matthew Orr, Callum McDonald, Dara Gill and Jack Beattie this weekend though there is a return for Isiah Morris.

"We were way off the boil last Saturday," adds the Derry coach, "We could actually have won the game with the last play but we didn't deserve to win it. We didn't really deserve to get anything out of the game. We ended up with a losing bonus point but it was just one of those days. It was a poor day at the office across the board.

"It was maybe one of those perfect storms in that everything seemed to work against us but second half we still had enough of the ball to do more than we did; but the first half was as poor as we've been since I have been here.

"And that's the challenge for us now, to bounce back from that and show how we can perform. We've got Letterkenny back-to-back and if we were to win both games it puts a good distance between us and them. Similarly, if they were to win then it would leapfrog them over us, so there's a lot to play for."