Mickey Harte: ‘It's a very sombre dressing room that we're in now'

SOMBRE: Derry manager Mickey Harte reacts during the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship quarter-final match between Kerry and Derry at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Ben McShane/Sportsfile

Ultimately it is the manner of their exit that will hurt most.

Derry have been explosive, engrossing, absolutely blockbuster. Even in their recent malfunctions, they have always been compelling in some form. Until Sunday.

The ending to the quarter-final defeat was borderline meek as Kerry ran out comfortable five-point winners.

“It is a very sombre dressing room that we're in now,” said Derry manager Mickey Harte post-match.

“It's been a challenge to get back to the level that we had in the National League and we took a few games in the last few weeks to get a bit of confidence back again.

“I thought that confidence was very much back on the back of the result against Mayo. But look, we were meeting an established team who are no strangers to all-Ireland quarter-finals, semi-finals and winning them.

“We had a tough battle out there today and I felt that we did well up to the 60th minute or so, keeping in touch and when you consider that we held David Clifford and Sean O'Shea to a pretty meagre return for their standards, you would have thought we had a reasonable chance of finishing the game out.

"But I suppose we weren't efficient enough and clinical enough ourselves and it is not hard to guess that 10 points won't win many Championship matches in Croke Park.”

As a whole, Harte’s assessment of their season is simple: “Reasonable.” The Division 1 league champions crashed in Celtic Park in the Ulster SFC quarter-final. Another two defeats followed.

It meant by time they had steadied the ship, they would face three games in the space of 14 days. That included extra-time and penalties last week in Castlebar.

They only scored three points from play in the second half. One of them came through their goalkeeper. However, Harte was not pointing at that short turnaround as an excuse.

“Look, when you lose in this situation, it is easy to make those things a reality or a narrative that fits well.

“I can't say for certain because I felt that we were okay going into the game. People pick up their injuries or niggles and all the rest of it and they get over it and they try to go on.

“So because Kerry pulled away, it seemed to be that you could suggest that. But I'm not sure. I think if we'd been more clinical, as I say, with our own possession, then the gap wouldn't have widened and it could have been a nip and tuck game to the very end.”

It means a team that started the season with All-Ireland aspirations exit at the quarter-final stage. It will hurt rather than haunt them.

“I'll always be disappointed about that result and that outcome,” said Harte.

“But I'm pretty much an optimistic person and I look ahead. The past can't be changed. We can try to do something different for the future. And I take life on a day-to-day basis like that.”