By Shaun Casey

DERRY’S injury crisis seems to have taken a step in the right direction, much to the delight of manager Eamonn Melaugh. The Oakleaf County have pretty much been down to the bare bones throughout the All-Ireland series.

They travelled to Waterford in their most recent outing three weeks ago with 16 fit and available players. The home side handed Derry their third hefty loss of the campaign, with 43 points the difference between the sides at full time.

Kilkenny (26 points) and Galway (32 points) have dished out previous hammerings to the side, but Derry are on the right path heading into the final few rounds as they’ve welcomed back a few more players from the sidelines.

They take on Dublin this weekend in the final round, who likewise have yet to pick up a point in the group stage phase of the competition and are hoping to earn their first victory of the campaign.

“It looks like we’ll be down to just two or three injuries so we’ll hopefully have a lot stronger squad heading into this next game,” said Melaugh ahead of the game. “We’ll definitely have more than 16 fit players anyway like we had for the Waterford game.

“Cliodhna Ní Mhianáin is back training and a couple of other girls just have to do a couple of fitness tests and hopefully that’ll be them good to go but we’re still missing Lauren McKenna and Rebecca Bradley, they’re out for the rest of the county season.

“Apart from that, the other four or five girls are coming on rightly too, so things are looking a bit better. Going down to Waterford with 16 players, that was a complete nightmare but getting these girls back now, the training sessions are even better now. The girls all get a bit more confidence so after those couple of bad defeats, they’re coming back to where they were before the championship and there’s a wee bit more of a buzz in the camp so hopefully everything will pick up a wee bit now.”

Dublin have also experienced three defeats on the bounce, although their results against Kilkenny, Waterford and Galway have all been much closer than Derry’s, and the Dubs have hit the net in those games as well.

Dublin have yet to capture a victory at all in 2025, with a round two draw against Galway in the National League the only time they avoided defeat. Melaugh is confident his side can but in a much better showing this weekend than in their previous outings.

“We’ve been doing our homework on Dublin, they’ve had a lot of bad results this year, they’ve only drawn one game but they have a strong enough team and they’re still a good enough team,” added the Derry boss, in his first season in charge.

“Kilkenny only beat them by five points a few weeks ago so they’ll still be a tough enough game but we’re definitely looking forward to it and hopefully everything works out for us at the weekend.”