Nov 10,2024
Ruaidhrí Higgins' side are seeking their second FAI Cup victory in three years following a demolarising conclusion to the league campaign, where they slumped to a fourth place finish after winning just one of their last eight games.
League runners-up over the past two years, Derry were arguably in the strongest position in the title race with five games remaining, just four points adrift of faltering league leaders Shelbourne with two matches in hand.
However, two damaging home draws in the space of four days against Bohemians and Sligo Rovers saw them surrender that brief advantage and their title push was doomed from that point on, and was formally ended with a 1-0 defeat to St Pat's on the penultimate weekend.
As a result, they head into Sunday's Cup final against Drogheda United requiring a win to secure European football for 2025.
By contrast, their form in the Cup has been bullet-proof, having dispatched Shelbourne, St Patrick's Athletic and Bohemians en route to another decider. And Corry feels that they should have enough quality to complete the job at the weekend, provided they've got the league disappointment out of their system.
"Realistically, when you look back at it, Derry had the best opportunity of all the teams to go ahead of Shelbourne.
"And they just weren't able to get over the line when those opportunities presented themselves. There was some really poor performances and really poor results along the way.
"Their form in the FAI Cup has been completely the opposite of that. They've had to steer some difficult fixtures to get themselves into the final.
"I still think, taking away the league form, I think this is a game they'll really fancy.
"If you rewind your mind back to when they played Shels (in the 2022 Cup final), it was probably a similar sort of opposition when you consider the difference in level between the two sides.
"On that day, the big pitch, the occasion, the big players that they have all stepped up. I would be expecting that it should be similar this weekend.
"You think of the likes of Michael Duffy on that big pitch. (Sadou) Diallo, who I thought was absolutely brilliant the other night and the game really changed when he came off in the middle of the park. Mark Connolly and his ability to play out from the back.
"They've a lot of really good players, it's just a question of whether they can knit it all together and put behind them what was a really disappointing last few weeks of the league campaign."
The Candystripes have a highly impressive FAI Cup record, having won six in total, more than any other club has managed since their entry in the southern league in 1985.
Higgins has personally been involved in three of those triumphs, winning two as a player in 2006 and 2012 and then as a manager in 2022.
In the latter success, Derry were far too good for Shelbourne in the final, at the end of Damien Duff's first season as Shels boss, cruising to a 4-0 victory.
Shels finished seventh in that year's league campaign, two spaces above where this week's opponents placed in 2024, however Drogheda have consistently proven to be troublesome opposition for the league's leading lights.
Kevin Doherty's side inflicted a wounding 2-1 loss on Derry in their most recent league meeting at the end of September. Corry expects Drogs to adopt a pragmatic gameplan, sitting back and then going direct on the counter to their in-form strike pairing of Frantz Pierrot and Douglas James-Taylor.
"I would expect Derry will go out and dominate possession and try to carve out chances. But it really comes back to whether the last few weeks have been really detrimental to the confidence of the players. That is maybe what swallows them up on the day.
"I wouldn't expect that to be the case but it absolutely could happen. In Drogheda you have a team who have shown with the two they have at the top end of the pitch, they don't need to complicate the game.
"They can sit in, they can make themselves difficult to beat and just try to feed the top two. They've shown against all levels of opposition in this division that they are capable of carving out opportunities.
"It will be tight. Cup finals typically are. But I do think there's a little bit of a gap between the two sides and I expect that Derry's experienced players will step up and they'll have enough to get themselves over the line."
