By Michael McMullan

CONOR Glass wants Derry to get back to winning ways this season and craves the roar of fans backing their challenge for honours this season.

The Oakleafers failed to win a game during the entirety of 2025 and begin their new campaign on Sunday in Letterkenny.

Glass, just married this week, is in line for this 60th appearance at senior level for the county but it will be a first McKenna Cup outing.

The Glen man made his debut as a substitute in 2020 in a victory over Longford in the first game after the Covid shutdown.

It was a night Rory Gallagher handed debuts to Paul Cassidy and Ethan Doherty despite not have tasted McKenna Cup action.

“A lot more Ws, hopefully, beside our name,” Glass said of what the county’s fans can expect from the side this season.

“We want to see more fans at games; we want to hear the roar of Celtic Park. We want to get back to Clones; to see the red and white coming up the streets of Clones town and we want to get back to Croke Park.

“We just need that support behind us. Yes, it’s Division Two, but having numbers at matches, hearing the roar when we need to get a score, or hearing the roar when we need to defend, hearing the roar when someone makes a diving block, that’s the thing that inspires teams.

“We just need that, we need to bring the pride back to Derry because Derry is a proud county in terms of football, so we just need to bring that back this year.”

Looking back on last season, the Derry skipper admits the players have to take their share of responsibility for a losing streak.

After relegation and bowing tamely out of the Ulster Championship at the hands of eventual winners Donegal, the Oakleafers regrouped for the All-Ireland series.

There was an upturn in performances but it wasn’t enough and defeat at the hands of Dublin spelt a premature end to the season.

Glass refers to the scene in the county this time last year. The new rules. Injuries to key players. Paddy Tally and his management team coming in late. Throw in the competitive nature of Division One.

“You need things to go your way,” Glass told Gaelic Life at the launch for the Dr McKenna Cup that gets underway this weekend.

“It’s very easy to blame management, it’s very easy to blame external things, but, as players, we have to look at ourselves.

“There were numerous games throughout the league, never mind the (All-Ireland) round-robin stag,e that we could have won, we should have won and that was on the players because we’re the ones playing on the day.

“Management are helpless, they’re on the sidelines, they can’t make any calls, we’re the ones playing, we’re the ones making decisions. We’re the ones having to get a kick out, we’re the ones trying to score.

“After the Ulster loss to Donegal, we had five or six weeks of training, hard training when you can hone in on a few things that we’d done wrong throughout the league.

“It was no surprise that we put in three good performances, obviously against Armagh, Galway and Dublin, we could have easily won all three of those games.”

It can sound like a picking of the positive ahead of the new season, and Glass accepts that to a degree but, more importantly, he looks at the hard facts.

“You can take positives out of it as much as you want but we’re all competitors at the end of the day and we want to win every game,” he stressed. “We didn’t win a game for 12 months, so you have to look at yourself.”

It as been an eventful off-season. There was the step back into the club season with Glen. His wife Neve gave birth to their son Con. There was wedding plans and juggling the running of their café in Maghera. Add in the return to club action with Glen.

“It’s been amazing, it’s been life changing,” he said of becoming a father.

“I’ve had time obviously to get the body right, a bit of downtime with the family and do things away from football because the last four or five years have been full on.

“Con, he’s a wee dote, he’s fantastic. I’ve had him a couple of club games so I’m looking forward to bringing him to a few county games and getting the Derry jersey on him.”

What does downtime look like for Conor Glass? In a world when football chat dominates life away from training, it’s getting away for a round of golf or getting away on holidays.

“When you’re away from the pitch and even when you’re up doing the shop, people are still chatting to you about football, about performance, about coaches or whatever,” he adds.

“The thing about it is, I love the GAA, I love training, I love being a part of football.

“Two weeks is probably enough down time for me. After that, I’m like, ‘right, I’ve had it, I’m ready to get back into it.’

“I know Gavin White and a few Kerry boys have said the exact same thing, they get two or three weeks off and then they’re actually back, so it’s the same as any competitive athlete.”

If Ciarán Meenagh names his captain in the starting line-up this weekend, it will be a first McKenna Cup game. It will come and go. Beyond that, Meath in Croke Park and Tyrone at Celtic Park come into view.

“There’s been good energy about your group so far,” Glass said. “I guess the McKenna Cup will be good for players to be blooded into it before round one (of the league), because the Meath game at Croke Park will be no easy feat.”