Nov 21,2024
Brendan Rogers insists that the Derry footballers didn't lose faith in former manager Mickey Harte but he accepts that their early-season focus this year might have led to the subsequent disappointing championship campaign.
The Oak Leaf county came into 2024 as two-in-a-row Ulster champions and fancied as All-Ireland contenders.
They won the pre-season Dr McKenna Cup and beat Dublin in the Allianz Football League Division 1 final but lost their first three games in championship to Donegal and eventual finalists Galway and Armagh, before exiting in the quarter-finals against Kerry.
Harte departed shortly after, having been in charge for less than 10 months, and has now been replaced by fellow Tyrone man Paddy Tally.
"There were a lot factors. I think both players and management could have said that we'd have done things better. Did we execute on the pitch the way we should have? And maybe the management takes the flak for it. Were our tactics perfect? I don't think anyone's tactics are perfect all the time. There's so much variability and change that the players have to deal with and maybe we didn't do that well enough.
"We set out our stall to play a certain way that we thought would hurt Donegal. Like all games you are aware of the risk and reward, we got caught in the risk the first time. Then the game had got away from us where we had to keep pressing on the risks to try get ourselves back in the game but it didn't work out for us on that day. Things after that, maybe injuries at a bad time, sending offs, we were ending up mixing and matching things too much.
"It looks like the wheels fell off the wagon and that things fell apart but that wasn't the case. I just think we did a few things wrong at critical times and we were punished heavily by very good teams and very organised teams.
"We still managed to turn around and beat Mayo [in the preliminary quarter-finals] after all that negative thing and would you have said that was a bad result? So the capability was there. It was just that on certain days it didn't work for us, and they just seemed to be bigger days than most in terms of publicity and size of crowd.
"You still have an admiration for what they brought to us."
Rogers highlighted what he felt were "a lot of learnings" under Harte and his management team.
"A lot of experience, a lot of good tacticians and good thinkers, they keep their cards close to their chests.
"He certainly has got a passion for the sport, and drive and relentless desire for success.
"He has been around the block and there was loads there from him in terms of self-motivation, team motivation and things like that. It is interesting to hear from a different perspective so there were a lot of good things to be learned.
"The man was not going to settle that this was the end of his road, he thought he had stuff to offer in Offaly [as joint-manager] and, fair play to him, Offaly is not exactly a quick commute. It just shows you the desire he has.
"I am thankful for the time we had, he did help us win a national league. An Ulster team had not won one in maybe over 15 years [Derry in 2008] and it was good to get over that line."
But did going all out to win the league cost Derry later in the season?
"Possibly, yeah. I suppose we wanted to prove ourselves that we could consistently perform at a Division 1 level. Maybe we put too much emphasis on that and we got something to learn for next year, to strike that balance.
"But look, you could never not go for the league either. If you went in saying, 'Ah well, we'll not worry about the league, we just want to focus on the championship'... but then if the league doesn't go well, you'd be saying, 'We didn't get any momentum from the league'.
"One thing we did learn from Mickey in that regard was never take anything for granted, win whatever's in front of you because there's no guarantee of success, in life in general. So you have to take every opportunity as it comes and we followed that mantra with the McKenna Cup and the league. We wanted to win those things.
"Would the championship have been any different? Who knows. But at least we can look back now and say we ticked those boxes.
"I guess it'll not be a thing on our mind to focus on the league so much anymore, that maybe we learned from that, how we can manage our season better, develop from that."
