By Niall Gartland

CORMAC O’Doherty had the honour of accepting the Christy Ring Cup on a Saturday afternoon that will go down in the annals of Derry hurling, but he knows as well as anyone that it wasn’t exactly plain-sailing to get to that point.

The Derry captain was involved in four previous defeats on the big day at Croke Park, and things weren’t looking too hot at the outset of the 2026 season when they fell to a chastening 5-23 to 0-12 defeat to Kerry in the opening round of the league.

At times their belief wavered – a series of All-Ireland final defeats will do that to a team – but a core group of players kept the faith as best they could and they produced a spell-binding performance in Saturday’s final, where on this occasion they inflicted defeat on the Kingdom. The stuff of dreams really.

O’Doherty said: “You’d wonder how it can happen so fast. I think it’s 14 or 15 weeks from that game, and a lot of our players since Saturday were playing that day. A lot of people put their heads down and we knew we weren’t as bad as we played that day. We were only really getting together as a group a couple of weeks before that. Kerry were primed and ready to go – we had seen that when they got promotion, so we knew we weren’t as bad as we were that day.

“The work that everybody has put in over four or five months to turn that around has been unreal, and for a lot of people to get this reward for all their hard work is brilliant.”

O’Doherty has enjoyed incredible success on both the football and hurling front down the years with his club Sleacht Néill, but their series of defeats in Christy Ring Cup finals was undoubtedly a sore point. It wasn’t for a lack of talent, however, and that knowledge kept O’Doherty’s eyes on the prize.

“I’ve very successful at club level, but to get that All-Ireland trophy with Derry is something that had been eluding us and it probably did start to weigh on us.

“There were moments across the last few years, maybe even this year, where you thought maybe this isn’t going to happen or things aren’t going to click into place.

“But you take a look around the changing room and you realise the quality is there – we just needed to perform on the days that matter.

“Over the last four or five weeks, we played as good a hurling as any Derry team has done that I’ve been involved in. That’s what winning big trophies is about – hitting form at the right time – and a lot of our players did that.

“While we’d lost a number of finals, the fact we’re so consistent at that level shows the talent pool that is there in Derry hurling, and hopefully the victory is a shot in the arm for everybody.

“Derry hurling has plenty of potential and this can be the start of something.”