Cahair O’Kane: Derry’s failure to move on from Rory Gallagher has turned the job into a poisoned chalice

AFTER almost three months of going around the houses, Derry look to finally have their man.

As first reported by our own Neil Loughran last week and solidified in today’s paper, Slaughtneil manager Mark Doran is being lined up for his first inter-county management job.

It’s a bit of a step into the unknown for everyone.

He’s coached Down, Clare and Wicklow in the recent past.

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He was in Clare one night a week in 2023 and what he brought there impressed them.

Everything they did on the training field under him was at a higher level than anything else they’d been exposed to during Colm Collins’ time.

They found that his training sessions were able to replicate the intensity and workload of a game, something they felt really stood to them.

He did have the luxury of only having to do it once a week there, and that was as a coach rather than a manager.

But he also had very definite designs on how Clare should play and one of the strengths was in communicating the message.

With Jerome Johnston Snr alongside him, they had won a Monaghan title with Ballybay and then beat Crossmaglen in Ulster.

It is predominantly his most recent work with Slaughtneil that has earned him his shot with Derry.

Glen had beaten the Emmets comfortably in 2021 and 2022.

Slaughtneil had made changes from the first day to the second but they made no difference.

The whole balance of the rivalry looked to have gone beyond repair.

It wasn’t a pretty performance Doran’s team brought to Owenbeg last year but it was mightily effective.

They brought war. They got right in Glen’s faces, ripped and wrestled at them, made it the most uncomfortable hour of the last three years Malachy O’Rourke has had in Derry club football.

What has impressed most about Doran, though, is that he’s reshaped the Emmet’s this year.

Even though they put it right up to Glen last year, it looked a bit like a last throw of the dice from Slaughtneil.

When it fell short, many wondered if and when they’d get back near it.

But they’ve injected serious fresh legs into the team.

He has brought Niall Morgan into his coaching team.

Slaughtneil have gone from a team looking as though they might be falling away to a rejuvenated force.

Doran has done a good job.

He’s earned a shot at inter-county management.

What he would admit, however, is that he’d be surprised that shot is coming with a team on the level of Derry, with two Ulster titles back-to-back in 2022 and ‘23.

The Oak Leafers thought they had James Horan over the line a few weeks ago before he pulled the pin.

Quite how close he really was is difficult to ascertain.

Sources in Mayo insist that he’s made it clear to plenty of people in his own neck of the woods that he’s not interested in managing another county.

He said it himself on the Examiner podcast last year, revealing that he’d been offered three jobs in the 2022 closed season.

Asked if he was interested in managing another county, he said: “I don’t think so, I’ve said that a few times. I don’t think so.”

But even at that, Derry had to ask.

The pool of potential managers is very shallow, as this column covered just a few weeks back.

Most of what has happened this summer was caused by what happened last summer.

Rory Gallagher’s exit from the post the week before the Ulster final was an unprecedented situation.

In fairness to just about everyone trying to deal with it, there was no handbook.

Derry made the decision after their defeat by Kerry that they would do everything in their power to put Gallagher back in.

By doing that, they missed out on any realistic chance they had of securing the services of Malachy O’Rourke.

Three weeks after Derry lost to Kerry last year, Brian Dooher and Feargal Logan were reappointed for another three years in Tyrone.

That was the window where Derry should have made a proper approach to O’Rourke.

Instead, they made him a very clear second choice. It was another two months before they went to him.

That has been manifesting itself ever since.

Contrast it with the public displays of affection from Tyrone towards the Glen manager since even before he was ever appointed.

Where Derry had made him an option, Tyrone made him their absolutely number one priority.

And then Derry did it again, going hard after a return for Gallagher again in the weeks after Mickey Harte stepped down on July 8.

The decision to finally rule him out, announced last week after The Irish News reported his lawyers’ statement that he was keen to return to inter-county football as soon as possible, is understood to have been made weeks ago.

It was a rare piece of good judgement on Derry’s behalf.

But beneath it, they’d gotten desperate.

An approach to Peter Keane underlined that.

How was it ever going to work logistically?

He couldn’t bring his own backroom team from Kerry.

The alternative was to cobble together a team of men he’d never met.

It did eventually fall apart, with Derry appearing to have backed away.

This will be a big jump for Mark Doran.

Everyone is unproven until they get a chance to prove themselves.

As Harte and Gavin Devlin found out to their cost, any new manager in Derry will find themselves in an almost impossible situation.

Rory Gallagher’s shadow looms over the team, impossible to shift.

The decision is made now. It won’t be him.

For the team’s sake, they have to break that link completely, cut themselves off from him.

Derry have done so much good work in the last decade to bring themselves to this point.

But the way the situation has been handled for the last year-and-a-bit has turned what should be one of the most attractive jobs in Ireland into a poisoned chalice.