Derry's 'scar tissue' of recent woes gone - Glass

Celtic Park, Derry — Midfielder Conor Glass believes the psychological weight of a 13-game winless run that stretched from the 2024 All-Ireland penalty shoot-out triumph to this January’s opening-night loss to Meath has finally been lifted.

The sequence, which began after Donegal’s four-goal Ulster Championship ambush in 2024, spanned the final months of Mickey Harte’s stewardship and the entirety of Paddy Tally’s one-year term in 2025. When Ciaran Meenagh returned as full-time manager this season, a 24 January defeat by Meath in Croke Park raised fears of another bleak spring.

Glass, who has watched the managerial baton change hands three times in little over a year, insists responsibility always lay closer to the white lines than the sideline.

“I had spoken after Paddy’s tenure, after Mickey’s — it was on the players,” he said. “You can prepare so much throughout the week, but at the end of the day they’re helpless on game day. We’re the ones on the pitch. We were in positions last year that we could have won games. You can’t be blaming managers; it’s just a scapegoat.”

The spark arrived seven days after the Meath setback: a three-point victory over Tyrone in Celtic Park. Derry collected four wins from their remaining five Division Two fixtures, the only blemish a damaging reverse away to Louth that ultimately denied promotion. Yet the Tyrone result, Glass argues, flushed lingering doubt from the squad.

“There was a lot of scar tissue, so regardless if it was a one-point victory or a ten-point victory that day, as Derry people we just wanted to get over the line,” he reflected. “You could just tell by the celebrations after — it just meant a lot to us. Not only as players, but as Derry fans in general.”

That scar tissue, Glass states flatly, is “gone now, absolutely”. Evidence arrived at the start of March when Cork were dismantled by 20 points, a statement performance that kept alive outside hopes of an immediate top-flight return. A subsequent slip against Louth “brought us back down to earth”, yet Derry regrouped to close the campaign with a win over Cavan.

Attention now turns to the Ulster Championship and a preliminary-quarter-final date with Antrim on Saturday. Should Derry advance, a potential rematch with Cavan looms, but Glass warns against looking beyond the Saffrons.

“We haven’t earned the right to disrespect anybody over our performances the last 24 months,” he said. “There’s no easy side of the draw in Ulster football, but the bigger teams are on the other side — I’m not going to play that down. We have a more favourable side, but it’s definitely not going to be an easy one. Cavan, Monaghan and Antrim — they’re all inter-county sides, they’re not club teams.”

Meenagh’s squad still regards itself “as one of the top teams in Ireland”, yet Glass acknowledges the recent past has mirrored Michael ‘Babs’ Keating’s old line that a pat on the back is only five inches from a kick in the backside. The focus, therefore, is narrow: beat Antrim, then reassess.

“If we get a good team performance over those two games, hopefully we’ll be standing in Clones on Ulster Final day,” Glass said.

For a county that has ricocheted from league champions to crisis and back again in barely 18 months, the prospect of a May afternoon in St Tiernach’s Park feels like both redemption and a fresh start.