When it rains, it pours for depleted City of Derry

City of Derry vs. Ballyclare   |   Judges Road   |   Saturday, 2:30pm

2024 has been nothing short of a nightmare for City of Derry, who now face promotion hopefuls Ballyclare with the squad absolutely depleted.

Just a few weeks ago, Derry were up there with both Ballyclare and Enniskillen with all three banded together at the top, but the advent of a new year has saw that group whittled down to two, with Richard McCarter’s team dropping away due to a draw with Coke and a defeat to Dromore.

Throw in a last-gasp defeat at Ballymena in the Town’s Cup quarterfinal, and it has been a disastrous few weeks for those in green and black.

“We haven’t won in three matches if you take the draw with Coke into account,” McCarter said. “We haven’t won in 2024 yet. I know it sounds more drastic than it probably is because in two of those three games we conceded a try in the last play of the game, which happened against Ballymena, while against Dromore, we just didn’t defend well enough.

"We were deservedly beaten that day, but we just have to put that to the back of our mind now. I’ve always been one who’s taken it one game at a time and it’s important that we do that now moving forward.”

That defeat to Ballymena in particular was devastating for McCarter, who really hopes to go all the way in the Town’s Cup.

“I’m not going to lie, that one was a tough one to take, it took me a couple of days to get over that,” he admitted.

“It’s never nice to lose any game, but we went up there with a fairly depleted team, showed om really good characteristics to hang in there in the first half when we were second best. We did really well to get in front, but to lose with the last play of the game was absolutely sickening.

“We’ve targeted the cup competitions this year, particularly after losing that league game against Dromore which I think takes us out of any outside chance of winning the league, so to be knocked out of the cup was really, really disappointing.”

‘Needed’

There was at least a two-week break to recuperate after that Town’s Cup loss, but a fortnight is unfortunately not enough to get the squad back up to full health. It is undoubtedly the most difficult part of the season for McCarter.

“It was good to have a week off last week,” he agreed. “I think everyone, myself included, needed to get away from rugby for a bit, especially after a difficult defeat like that. We have so many injuries at the minute and players unavailable that it just gave us the opportunity to get those lads an extra week of treatment and not have to worry so much about rugby, so we didn’t do much last week.

The green and black have yet to win a game in 2024.

"But we have to get back into it now and there’s no bigger game than coming up against the league leaders and the newly-crowned Junior Cup champions.”

Ballyclare have already defeated City of Derry twice this season, a 13-22 win in September and a 25-33 win at Judges Road in the Irish Junior Cup in November. On both those occasions, McCarter’s team was close to full strength, making the prospect of facing them with such depletion a daunting one.

“Absolutely,” McCarter agreed. “I would still argue that two of our best performances this year have been against them; we played really well, but at the end of the day we got nothing out of either game, and that was when we were pretty much full strength. At the minute, the squad for Saturday is pretty depleted, I’m not gonna lie.

“It makes it a massive challenge for us, but I think the way we have to look at it is the pressure is on them this Saturday. They are the team that’s striving to win the league.

"They want to get promoted, they need to get promoted because they have been there or thereabouts for the past few years and the next step on their journey is to be an All-Ireland club.

“We’re not there yet, and we’re not going to finish in the top two, so for us it’s about retaining third spot, so we just have to go out this Saturday with as much confidence as we can and show the strength of character that we have. This is a difficult period for us with the squad, but we need players to stand up and be counted, when it really matters.”