GERARD O’KANE: The picture is becoming clearer

WEEK five of the league has just passed and ‘moving day’, to use some golfing parlance, has come and passed.

Each division is starting to take a sort of shape in terms of how the top two or three teams are panning out, a middle cohort of teams and then the bottom two or three teams in each division are being cut adrift from the rest.

The one division where this is not as obvious is at the top of Division One – it nearly looks like teams are happy to be safe from relegation but trying to stay out of the top two as they don’t want the league finals impinging on their championship openers. That’s a whole other conversation about the value placed on the league, the squeezing of the calendar, etc.

So how exactly does a team pull the reins up for the last few league games anyway? If you have been winning consistently, it’s nigh-on impossible to send a team out to get beaten.

Lads who have not been playing each week might see this as their chance to put themselves front and centre in the management’s mind so there is no way these lads are going out to go through the motions. There is also the point of keeping up momentum and gaining a psychological advantage on teams who you might meet down the line in the matter of three or four weeks. All these things are swirling around in the ether so to talk about teams keeping the dignity of the league and putting their best foot forward, I can only imagine each manager looks at it all on a week-by-week basis and does what is best for their own team.

Unfortunately in Derry we don’t have the luxury at the moment of having those conversations about tailing off in the league and getting ready for the championship opener in Ballybofey.

Each week is a battle for points and has been a battle right up until the end (barring the Dublin game). In a contradictory sort of way, the league has been positive from the point of view that we could have and should have beaten Kerry, we certainly could have beaten Galway and being six points up with 63 minutes on the clock on Sunday past away to Donegal, we looked fairly comfortable on the scoreboard at least. Small margins dictate each game and Sunday was no different.

Losing Eoin McEvoy and Brendan Rogers from the centre of defence, one already minus Conor McCluskey and Gareth McKinless and with Padraig McGrogan then off, left a big gap to fill. When the screw starts to turn, you tend to look to someone who is capable of getting hands on the ball, slowing the play down or taking the responsibility of taking on their own man and then carrying the ball 60-plus yards up the pitch. Rogers and McEvoy fit this bill perfectly and Derry simply could not get their hands so the ball – it just kept coming back in waves from both kick-outs and open play and eventually the dam burst.

We now face an uphill battle to retain our Division One status and it is out of our own hands and we are now dependent on other results even if we win. The league can be judged as a whole after the full complement of games have been played but even if Derry lose their top-flight status, there will be an acknowledgment that most of the performances so far have been competitive so there is a middle ground there somewhere.

Our neighbours across the Sperrin Mountains will be feeling very much the same way. As the weeks go by its looking increasingly likely that Tyrone might find it hard to retain their Division One status. With only one win to their name so far and Donegal and Dublin to come, they might get some joy from the fact these teams are safe but as noted above, teams won’t just switch off either. Add in to the fact that the teams around them, Mayo, Kerry and Armagh, all have them on the head-to-head rule, and this might act like an extra point for those teams where teams finish level.

Tyrone’s display on Sunday was one of their best yet and they have put both Galway and Kerry to the pin of their collar in the last few weeks so they will take encouragement from that and the proverbial ‘spring in their step’ as we move into March. With a new management, it nearly looks like the hardest job is to find the best balance for the team, not necessarily the best 15 players on the pitch, but Malachy O’Rourke is a far smarter man than me and he sees them daily so no doubt he will have a fair idea how he sees it all playing out in the long run.

A lot of column inches here yet only giving a brief synopsis of two of the Ulster teams – I could dedicate a whole page to each and it would not be enough to give the full picture of how each team is progressing. The one team who is looking under a bit of real pressure and in danger of falling into the depths of Division Four is Antrim.

With Andy McEntee in his third season, the squad faces a big game next weekend versus Sligo in what nearly looks like a winner takes all to see who avoids the drop.

There would have probably have been more of an expectation that their Division Three status would have been secure by this point and they’d look ahead to a good run in the Tailteann Cup but week-on-week seems to be the priority for Antrim at this stage.

From the outside looking in, they just never seem settled in terms of the playing pool they have at their disposal.

While I don’t profess to know their squad intimately, there always seems to be talk of players not on the squad for differing reasons (either by their own choice or managerial choice) but getting the best 25-plus players to commit and go all in seems to be a circle which is hard to square for Antrim.

In truth, most counties likely have one or two players not on a squad who should be but Antrim seem to have a higher number. This turns into a never ending cycle and when your pool of competitive players is relatively small to begin with, if you don’t have your full deck, you are on the backfoot already.