Brennan: We can beat anyone

SPEAKING to the Irish Examiner last week, John Brennan jovially looked for the promise of a gin and tonic were Derry to overcome their Ulster semi-final hoodoo.

The drink shall go down as an IOU but the pity was so few of the county’s supporters were on hand in Clones to celebrate with him and his players.

Neither were they in the vicinity to hear some of the quips their joyous manager had at the ready. Asked about repeatedly facing questions about Derry’s record during the week, he described them as “like an old LP with a faulty needle!”

But when it was suggested that Armagh were complacent going into yesterday, he said: “How many times have I said prior to this we had to raise our standards? Fermanagh wasn’t a big contest.

“I also said Armagh had to sustain what they did against Down and if we raised our game and they couldn’t then I thought we had a very good chance.

“That’s basically what happened. Maybe we were a lot better than Down. I think we are anyway, I think we’re as good as anybody!

“I’m proud of them, we got over the line, we’re in an Ulster final and I hope to win something but I’m just so proud of the players who’ve taken so much criticism because they hadn’t won a semi-final.

“We’re over one line now but I want to go over another line. They were very good and I’m proud of them.”

Brennan believes the victory could be the making of Derry this season.

“If we play like that we’ll play and possibly beat anybody. I said if Derry got over this line today we’ll be there later on this year and I repeat that.”

Brennan singled out his full-forward line for much of his praise, Conleth Gilligan, Eoin Bradley and Mark Lynch scoring all but two points of his side’s 3-14 total.

“We scored three goals and our inside forwards, Conleth, Mark, Eoin. We can’t add any more superlatives. They’ve said it all. They produced it!”

Armagh boss Paddy O’Rourke conceded his team had lost the majority of individual battles but insisted they hadn’t put too much focus on beating Down the last day.

“That shouldn’t be the case and we didn’t feel that it would. The team worked extremely hard in training, there was no sign of that in training. They worked very hard over the past three weeks. Had we stuck the ball in the net, we had a couple of chances which may have changed the complex of the game.