Colm O'Rourke: Derry defeat a wake up call for Meath

COMPREHENSIVE DEFEAT: Meath manager Colm O'Rourke. Pic: INPHO/Lorcan Doherty

Meath manager Colm O'Rourke admitted Saturday's chastening 11-points defeat to Derry was a reality check for the Royals after victories in their opening two league matches.

The two counties both went into the Owenbeg encounter with perfect league records but a gulf in class was evident from as early as the opening minute when Ethan Doherty's goal set the Rory Gallagher's team on their way to a 10 point half-time lead and an ultimately easy victory.

Despite scoring seven goals in games against Cork and Clare, O'Rourke said the journey to the Ulster champions was always going to be a serious step up in quality but vowed to learn from the set-back.

"Derry were in the All-Ireland semi-final (last year) and could easily have been in the final," explained the Meath manager, "(They’re) Ulster champions, the most difficult province to win. Maybe tonight was probably a more accurate reflection of exactly where we are at the moment.

"We have still a long, long way to go but when you have players who are committed and as interested in improving themselves as we have at the moment we can make progress. It may not come all of a sudden, we may have to be patient with them, but it will come.

"There were so many lessons. From start to finish I suppose we were poor in a lot of areas. Our ability to break down their mass defence was not good. Our tackling in the forward line and tracking of players was not good.

"Again, a lot of it due to inexperience, players not playing at this level but there is a lot to be learned from that. The lads themselves are their harshest critics. So we’ll have a good look at it on Tuesday night. No need to get overly critical of them."

A second Derry goal from Niall Toner in first half injury time rendered the second period all but irrelevant and O'Rourke is expecting a reaction next week against Louth.

"We’ll be ready," he added, "We’ll take what we can from tonight. There was a lot of lads who tried really hard, a lot of lads things didn’t go right for even though they tried very hard so it wasn’t all bad. In the second half we put up better resistance. Maybe it could be said that Derry had eased off but we will take some positives."

The one sided victory means Derry have six points from six ahead of a tricky looking trip to Newbridge next Sunday and manager Rory Gallagher was pleased at the manner of victory.

"We did really outclass them and I was delighted with that, I don't think being 10 points up in the first half flattered us," explained Gallagher.

"It was a step up in class to a degree but I think we answered it very well but also as we would have expected. Look, I would have expected the trajectory we are on to be very positive and I would expect us to be able to win games like this but I am delighted we won it in the style we did on a night that wasn't easy to play football."

Despite Derry maintaining their perfect start, Gallagher isn't getting ahead of himself after seeing his team miss out on promotion last season despite a record tally of 11 points.

"They are all tough and going down to Newbridge is very daunting. Obviously they haven't had the start they wanted but they probably came away from the Dublin game feeling they were in a good shape," explained the Derry boss.

"Look, the league is full of ups and downs, even within a game, so the challenge for us is to bring the hunger and the passion, take the learnings from this and be smart."