A brand new year for the Oakleaf minor team

By Niall Gartland

DERRY may be back-to-back All-Ireland Minor champions but their manager Kieran Glackin points out that this is very much a new team and a new year.

The Bellaghy man was handed the reins by Damian McErlain, who has moved up to taking the U-20 grade, though he hasn’t been left with much in terms of personnel due to a natural turnover of players.

Only four of last year’s all-conquering squad remain available and time will tell whether they’ll leave quite the same impression as the previous crops.

They won the Ulster Minor League Shield title – a step down from the main trophy on offer – but they still looked good and will fancy their chances of getting their Ulster Championship campaign off to a winning start away to Cavan this Saturday.

“We’ve four panellists from last year which includes one of the lads who played in the All-Ireland final, Cody Rocks.

“Otherwise it’s a new panel, and that’s a situation a lot of minor teams face themselves in, where they don’t retain many players from the year before.

“I think it’s a lot to do with the fact it was changed to U-17 a number of years back, the pocket of players probably isn’t the same as it was when it was 17-18 year olds on minor teams.”

Glackin led Bellaghy to Ulster Minor Championship honours in 2019 and also spent time working under his brother-in-law John McKeever at senior level. He’s also brought with him some prior experience of coaching at intercounty level – he was coach when former Donegal captain Paddy Campbell was in charge of the Derry minors.

In terms of his panel, there are 15 clubs represented, and it’s no surprise that it’s Magherafelt who lead the way in terms of representation given their massive success at underage level.

“Magherafelt had an extremely strong U-16 team last year, they won the Paul McGirr Ulster Minor Championship tournament, probably by quite some distance. Not too many got close to them, so that’s what there’s such a strong cohort of those lads on the team.”