Shane McGuigan insists that it’s business as usual for Derry despite recent upheaval.
The Ulster champions returned to winning ways last weekend with a decisive victory over Donegal in Ballybofey having drawn their two previous outings against Monaghan and Armagh, albeit they retained their provincial crown following a penalty shootout with the latter.
That Armagh game was shrouded in controversy after serious allegations emerged on social media about team manager Rory Gallagher from his estranged wife, Nicola.
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Having stepped back from his involvement with the team ahead of the Ulster final, Gallagher resigned a couple of days after it, with coach Ciaran Meenagh taking charge.
“Nothing really did change,” insisted McGuigan, who starred in that game and others to pick up the PwC Player of the Month for May.
“We had our team goals set up at the start of the year and one of them was to win Ulster. No matter what happened, nothing was going to try and derail that for us.
“We’ve talked about, as players, how much is player-driven. I think that week especially really brought forward that mantra of being player-driven. And I think the boys stood up and answered all the questions perfectly.”
Gallagher’s departure cast his right-hand man Meenagh into the spotlight, with the Tyrone man having carried a rather low profile prior to recent events.
“Well, Ciaran was actually in with us the year before Rory stepped in but the boys were keen on keeping Ciaran on because we knew the type of man he was, first and foremost, but he had a really good way about him on the training pitch,” McGuigan explained.
“He’s a brilliant trainer and the things that he sees in games, it really opened our eyes up to football at that time.
“Then Rory brought it on to another level and Ciaran’s said himself, he learned off him so nothing’s changed in how we train.
“Ciaran knows our strengths as a team and the trainings are always built around that there and for the last while they’ve just continued to build around that.”
Last Sunday’s win was just the second defeat inflicted on Donegal in Championship football since 2010 and a welcome return to form for Derry after, like a number of provincial finalists, they struggled in their first round robin game, drawing with a Monaghan side that they had beaten comfortably just weeks before.
“There could have been a bit more incentive to win your provincial, if you had got straight into a quarter-final, so there could be some tweaks that they made to it,” says the Slaughtneil man of the new system.
“Coming off that high straight away to get focused again, we knew Monaghan had five or six weeks of preparing for that first round game which wasn’t really fair as such, where we were just trying to recover from a game but that’s the way it is.
“It was the same for six, seven other teams so we just had to get on with it. I think we bounced back against Donegal.”
In the first year of the new-look football Championship, the format has been criticised for the fact that three teams emerge from groups of four and McGuigan believes that the lack of jeopardy has contributed to spells of possession football that have been decried in some quarters, most notably in relation to Roscommon’s six-minute period of keep-ball during their draw with Dublin.
“I think the format has probably added to it. Obviously teams don’t have to go for the risk because they know they’ve got a chance, especially in the first two games, they’ll always have a chance for another game to correct it.
“But I think, come knockout stages, you’ll see another slight twist on it - when teams have to come out, expand a bit more, because they’ll know it’s do or die.
“As a forward, it can get frustrating at times when you make a run and the players choose a handpass or to the side. But for me, the skill level and everything that is in the game is at its absolute optimum at the minute.
“So, I don’t see it as a massive, massive problem. You can always find a negative in something, but you can always find a positive in the skill level, to see the game and work out the different patterns to break down (defences) is something that interests me.”
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