SECONDS out, round two.
The earlier meeting of Derry and Dublin was shadow boxing of sorts, but Dubs boss Dessie Farrell is anticipating a ding-dong battle when they meet again in Sunday’s Division One Final.
Oak Leaf manager Mickey Harte rested half his first choice side for the start of that Celtic Park meeting in round five and the visitors ended up as fairly comfortable five-point victors.
However, Farrell is expecting a different type of contest in Croke Park this weekend, predicting: “I think us going at it and Derry going at it, it’ll be a great opportunity for both teams to really see where they are at and more preparation for what’s coming than anything else.”
Although Championship remains the priority for both sides, Farrell is looking forward to “a massive challenge against a really, really good team. We played them, obviously, last year in the Division Two Final and it was a very strange sort of a game. We scored four goals, I think 4-6 was our score.”
His recall is correct and, unusually, the losers scored more times than the winners, but Derry’s 11 were all points, so they lost convincingly by seven.
Another victory this weekend would bring Farrell his first outright Division One crown as manager, having shared the title with Kerry during the 2021 campaign truncated by Covid considerations.
Farrell insists he’d be pleased to add the trophy to Dublin’s collection, but admits that it hasn’t been at the forefront of his thinking:
“It’s a national competition so obviously it’s important and it’s an honour to win any national competition.
“It’s not the blue riband, of course, and I think the approach we took early enough in our own league campaign was: let’s not worry about outcome so much, let’s not worry about winning league points, or getting stuck on relegation, or you know, even getting to a league final, let’s just take every game on its merits and try to grow our game as we go and get better and try to improve with each performance.
“So we’ve been trying to see that level of performance as we advance through the campaign. That’s what we’ve been going after and I think we’ll just continue in that vein for the next day.”
Given the tighter inter-county schedule nowadays due to the split season, there have been increasing calls for League finals to be done away with.
Farrell appreciates that other counties may have different perspectives, especially if tough Championship games are looming for them, but he still sees the value in league finals rather than just finishing up after round seven:
“For us, in our situation, it’s great to have an extra game that’s a really good quality game. Otherwise, you might be looking at trying to arrange a challenge game or trying to sort of get lads up for an internal game. It’s not the same thing.
“Even though the season is tight and the windows for those types of games aren’t that significant, players at the end of the day still want to be playing games rather than doing drills. So for us, where we’re at, it’s good to have it.
“Whether it’s a race to the top, a straight race, whether that’s the best, I don’t know. But from our perspective we’re delighted to have another big game coming up.”
