By Niall Gartland

THE primary objective for the Derry camogs in this year’s All-Ireland Senior Championship campaign is pretty simple as far as manager Eamonn Melaugh is concerned – maintaining their senior status one way or another.

The Oakleafers are flying the flag for Ulster as the only representatives from the province operating at senior level this year, though they will need to set aside two spurned opportunities at landing silverware ahead of Saturday’s opener against Kilkenny at Owenbeg.

Melaugh’s side fell short in the Division 2A side against Offaly in mid-April and just the other week they suffered the same fate against their neighbours Antrim in the Ulster Senior Championship final.

Those defeats were by no means catastrophic, particularly after such a promising league campaign in Melaugh’s first year at the helm, and now the big hope is that they manage to stay afloat in the All-Ireland Senior Championship.

The Lavey man said: “We were obviously disappointed with how the finals went, we’d have liked to have won both of them, but considering there’s been a rebuild of the team, we were very happy just to get to the finals, and we’ve probably done a lot better than we were expecting at the start of the year.”

Derry will be minus the services of two of their key players in their championship opener against Kilkenny, but Melaugh points out that they gave Antrim a decent game even without injured duo Lauren McKenna and Aoife Ní Chaiside.

“We’re going to give the championship our best shot, and the plan is to hopefully stay up at that senior level for next year.

“We’ve a couple of girls injured at the moment, Lauren and Aoife were two big losses in the Ulster final, but to be fair to the rest of the girls against Antrim, we were right in it until the last four or five minutes of the game, there was only a goal in it. In injury time Antrim scored 1-2 which took the gloss of it a bit.

“They’ll definitely not be back for the Kilkenny game, Lauren could be out for another couple of weeks, so it’ll be touch and go whether she’ll be back for the Galway game.”

As for what Eamonn is expecting from Kilkenny, he knows they’re a strong side but he doesn’t think they’ll be a massive step up from what they’ve already faced in recent weeks.

“We’ve looked at a few of their games and I know they’re a big name, but from what we’ve seen of Offaly and Antrim,

“I don’t think they’re significantly better than those two teams. They might be slightly better but I don’t think there’s a massive gap between themselves and the likes of Offaly.”