McIver deflects praise as super substitutions work wonders

He could have played to the gallery but Brian McIver took little personal praise for the impact of his super substitutions.

Emmet McGuckin shot a match winning 1-1, his goal created by fellow substitute Ciaran McFaul who pilfered an important late score himself.

“Sometimes you make substitutions and they work for you — it can be a great call or if you end up getting beaten it’s ‘terrible decisions’,” said McIver. “On the day it worked for us.”

The former Donegal manager was disappointed to have to speak more at length about the injury sustained by Raymond Wilkinson.

The corner-forward was taken away by medics after a potentially serious knee injury.

“He’s going to get an x-ray,” said McIver. “The physios are concerned it may be a bad injury. From where we were at, it looked a pretty innocuous challenge between two men but it was obviously the way he landed.

“Until the outcome is confirmed I can’t say anything more on it.”

It was Derry’s first success since 2008 though, inevitably, it will be quickly forgotten if they don’t engineer a repeat performance to overcome Down in the Ulster championship.

“Absolutely, come June 2, what happens on the 28th of April will count for absolutely nothing,” said McIver. “Down are going in as a Division 1 side for the last three years, they’ve been in an All-Ireland final three years ago.

“We can’t buy that level of craft or experience. The other side of it is that I know these boys are bouncing right now in terms of how they’re playing.”

Westmeath boss Pat Flanagan reckoned the six-point winning margin greatly flattered Derry and did an injustice to his team.

“I think so, yeah, it was a very open game,” said Flanagan. “If you look at their system and our system, they are both counter attacking but I don’t think we deserved to be that much behind. We just have to learn what we can from it.”

Ultimately, Flanagan hailed their campaign a success.

“Everyone wrote us off two years ago when we were in Division 3, in 2011, and expected us to go to Division 4,” he claimed.

“Certainly, last year, no-one expected Westmeath to survive in Division 2. So we are building and building. We could have done with this win as part of that process but they are a good bunch of lads who will keep improving.”