McGarvey disappointed with Derry display in crunch clash with London

Derry manager Johnny McGarvey said his side weren’t at the level required in Saturday’s crunch league encounter with London.

After trailing 3-5 to 0-7 at the break, Derry fell to a defeat that leaves them needing to beat Westmeath in their final game to save themselves from the drop to Division Three.

McGarvey didn’t feel his side got the rub of the green with refereeing decisions in their defeat to Meath the previous week.

“I'm really disappointed now,” he said after Saturday’s defeat. “I was fairly annoyed about the way things had went last week, but today we weren't good enough. We didn't play well enough. It's on us today.”

After missing an early free, Derry found themselves six points down, a margin that left them chasing the game.

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“For the next 20 minutes, I thought we hurled absolutely brilliantly, hurled really well into the breeze,” he said.

“We took a few scores and got it back to a point and then I have no idea what happened. We were hit with two absolute disasters of goals.

“The first one we had the ball twice and still somehow managed to concede a goal. The second one, the ball bounced, the boy pulls it and it's just not good enough.”

There was no panic in the Derry dressing room at the break but in a fractured second half, they were unable to get any fluency in their play as London controlled the tempo against the wind.

“We couldn't find any momentum,” McGarvey said. “We couldn't seem to be able string the points together and we had plenty of chances. We just couldn't seem to find that run of three or four scores on the bounce that would have kept us ticking over.

“I think maybe we were back to two points with 10 minutes to go. It really looked like it would kick on and it just didn't happen for us.

“We didn't hurl well enough there today but I still think we done enough to win the match. That's what happens but you've got to be better than we were today.

“If you had asked me at half-time, I'd have said 100 per cent, that we'd have hit 20 points today with no question about it whatsoever and we're nowhere near it.

“We had chances to get to it but we would have been totally convinced at half-time. We held them to two points in the second half. It was three soft goals and it just killed us. It's very, very disappointing.”