Allianz National Football League

Round 1: Sunday 28 January, Doire v An Iarmhí, Owenbeg (2.30pm)*

Round 2: Sunday 4 February, An Longfort v Doire, Pearse Park (2.00pm)

Round 3: Sunday 11 February, Doire v Uíbh Fhailí, Celtic Park (2.00pm)

Round 4: Saturday 24 February, Fear Manach v Doire, Brewster Park (7.00pm)

Round 5: Saturday 3 March, Ard Mhacha v Doire, Armagh (7.00pm)

Round 6: Sunday 11 March, Doire v Loch Garman, Owenbeg (2.00pm)

Round 7: Sunday 25 March, Sligeach v Doire, Markievicz Park (3.00pm)

Allianz National Hurling League

Round 1: Sunday 28 January, Doire v An Dún, Owenbeg (12.30pm)*

Round 2: Sunday 4 February, Dún na nGall v Doire, Letterkenny (12.30pm)

Round 3: Sunday 18 February, Doire v Maigh Eo, Celtic Park (2.00pm)

Round 4: Sunday 25 February, Doire v Ard Mhacha, Owenbeg (2.00pm)

Round 5: Sunday 4 March, Cill Mhantáin v Doire, Aughrim (2.30pm)

*Hurling and Football Double Header

Scór na nÓg semi-finals
Saturday 18th November @ 7pm in Desertmartin
Sunday 19th November @ 5pm in Ballinderry Parish Hall

Derry Final
Sunday 26 November @ 3pm in Glenullin

Ulster-semi final in Swatragh on 10 December @ 7pm

Ulster Final 13 January @ 5pm in Downpatrick

All Ireland Final
Saturday 17 February @ 3pm in Sligo IT.

Details of all entries to be with irishculturalofficer.derry@gaa.ie by Monday 6 November

Newbridge v Belcoo @ 5.15pm

Slaughtneil v Omagh @ 7.00pm

College Field – adjacent to Celtic Park

Rath Mor Shopping Centre (5 minute walk)
Bligh’s Lane BT48 9PJ

St Cecilia’s College (5 minute walk)
Bligh’s Lane BT48 9PJ

Model Primary School
Northland Road BT48 7HJ (Approx 10/15 minute walk)

In addition to these locations, there are several council and private car par parks located within the city.

We would ask all supporters to please allow adequate time for your journey, do not block access to any residential homes or park in areas which may be required by emergency services, and at all times, please co-operate with stewards.

Derry Under 15 Squad 2018

All players and Parents are asked to attend a very important meeting on Wednesday 25th October in The Johnny Burke Suite Owenbeg at 7.45pm sharp.  The meeting will outline the plans for this group and there will be gear distributed on the night.  We look forward to your attendance.

Derry will play Donegal and Down, players will be finished at 2pm.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

~ George Bernard Shaw

A man with whom the comfortable status quo seldom rests easy, Derry and Slaughtneil dual star Chrissy McKaigue has his sights set on giving the youth of the Roe Valley area a taste of Ulster Colleges’ elite competitions.

Gleann na Ró – a new amalgamation of St Mary’s Limavady, NWRC and St Patrick’s Dungiven – recently played its first game in the MacLarnon Cup.

“When you look what Saint Patrick’s Maghera have been able to do, and last year with Saint Mary’s Magherafelt, it gives us a template to follow,” said McKaigue, Gaelic games coordinator at the Limavady school.

Currently preparing for Ulster club campaigns in hurling and football with Slaughtneil and having faced urban giants such as St Vincent’s (Dublin), Austin Stacks (Tralee) and Dr Crokes (Killarney) in recent years, McKaigue is ideally placed to consider the GAA from both rural and urban perspectives.

“Derry have identified that they need to get more players from their urban areas,” he explains.

“I would certainly agree with this trait of thought especially when you look the growth of urban GAA in other counties. I feel that the best way to increase the interest and education of GAA is through the schools. The work in primary schools is important but it’s in the secondary schools where we must give the players the opportunity to play competitive GAA.”

With the three educational institutions already competing in the lower levels of Ulster Colleges’ football, McKaigue is effectively challenging the level of ambition in the area by going straight into grade two. It’s a move which has been boosted by the availability of three of the Derry minor team which reached this year’s All-Ireland final.

Callum Brown, Oran Hartin and Seán McKeever will be available to the Gleann na Ró side in their maiden McLarnon campaign.

“There is little doubt that their exploits in helping Derry win the Ulster minor title this year has helped inspire players around them,” claims McKaigue. “The Roe Valley community is an area with huge potential. It is my belief, that if the players in the local area are not exposed to an elite level of Gaelic games early in their careers that they will inevitably drift away.

Gleann na Ró will join fellow Derry schools St.Pius X and Loreto Coleraine at the tier two grade in what McKaigue claims ‘will be an extremely competitive level of football’.

Always looking forward, and at the bigger picture, the Slaughtneil man hints at further ambition in years to come saying:

“Currently Derry have two schools that play grade 1 Ulster schools senior football. Personally, I feel Derry is capable of more. In the short term amalgamations may provide the opportunity to allow more of our underage to play at a higher grade of Gaelic games.”

Please respect local residents when parking, refrain from blocking any access points to residential homes, and please do not park in any areas that may be required by emergency services. Thank you for your continued support and co-operation.

Other sessions include:

Wednesday 4th October Owenbeg 6.30pm

Saturday 7th October Owenbeg 10am

Wednesday 11th October Owenbeg 6.30pm

Saturday 14th October Owenbeg Ulster Blitz 10am

Proud Sponsors of Derry GAA Development Squads

Kevin McCloy speaking at the launch of Donal McAnallen’s new book at Garvaghey, Co Tyrone.

With grace we will suffer

With grace we shall recover

There by the grace of God

There by the grace of God, Manic Street Preachers, 2002.

Sunday 10 September was an emotional evening at the home of Tyrone GAA at Garvaghey.

The launch of Dr Dónal McAnallen’s book ‘The Pursuit of Perfection’ – a detailed and inspirational account of his brother Cormac’s life and legacy – was attended by, among many others, Derry’s All-Star full back, Kevin McCloy.

While the large crowd packed the auditorium, to the Lavey man’s right at the head of the room sat Tyrone senior football manager, Mickey Harte. To his left sat the book’s brilliant author. Each had a unique and emotional, yet intertwined, story to tell.

The whole evening was knitted together with class and wit by one of Ulster’s great Gaels, Mark Conway.

Some of the insights were absolutely fascinating for any followers of Gaelic games.

Like the story of how Cormac loved to keep records. How as a player, as the book’s title suggests, he had constantly strove for perfection both on and off the pitch.

How there were drawers full of his own self-performance analysis, long before performance analysis was even ‘a thing’. How he had kept those records from his earliest playing days until his last.

One of his drawings from his formative years showed a detailed schematic plan of Croke Park. Each stand was sketched and labelled. And then, like on match days such 28 September 2003, it began to fill with 82,000 people. Except it wasn’t finished. Circles had been drawn to represent each person in the crowd. The Nally stand was filled first. Then the Hogan. The young would-be All-Ireland winner had drawn the representation of each person by hand, boxing the circles into groups after each 100 in order to keep count.

“He always kept himself honest,” said Dónal McAnallen.

By the time he had reached a few sections along the Hogan Stand, Cormac had drawn a staggering 10,000 circles on the page.

His devotion to detail was demonstrated again years later on perhaps his finest hour. After devising their game plan to beat Armagh at a training weekend on the previous Saturday in Dublin, the wallchart fixed on the dressing room wall underneath the Hogan Stand predicted both the half time and full time scores to within a few points.

The game had followed the script more or less to the letter and as the Red Hand players celebrated their maiden Sam Maguire win, few noticed as the young Eglish full back removed the document from the wall, carefully folded it, and placed it in his kitbag for safe keeping and posterity.

It was an act only revealed to his manager, as well as the attentive crowd, on that damp Sunday evening in September 2017.

It was jaw-droppingly poignant.

Just like McCloy’s account of his own experience.

No-one needs reminded of the events of 13 August 2014 at Owenbeg when 11 minutes into the first half of the senior championship match between Lavey and Magherafelt, McCloy collapsed.

The husband and father of two (now four) had been struck down by a serious heart problem, the details of which are beyond the analysis of this discussion. Thanks to the presence of defibrillators – the awareness around which had been the gift of the Cormac Trust following the heroic response of the McAnallen family to the circumstances in which they found themselves ten years previous – McCloy’s life had been saved.

It was a connection he would never forget again and one which accounted for his presence at the book launch, as well as his unstinting ongoing work with the McAnallen family and the Cormac Trust.

From the time of Cormac’s death, the McAnallen family was keen to direct public attention to these cardiac conditions that cause such sudden deaths. Their work based on the promotion, education, awareness and provision of defibrillators has changed many lives, including one of our county’s finest footballers.

They were two All-Stars and two full-backs, suffering two similar incidents with tragically different outcomes.

We owe them both our diligence and attention to detail within all our own clubs and communities to ensure that proper training and education is in place for the use of CPR and automated external defibrillators (AEDs).

There by the grace of God, go I.

This game will be preceded @ 1.30pm by Under 18 B2 Final: Callan Gaels v Ballinderry.

In addition to the College Field adjacent to Celtic Park, we have arranged parking facilities at the following locations:

Rath Mor Shopping Centre, Blighs Lane

St Cecilia’s College, Blighs Lane

Model Primary School, Northland Road

We would ask all patrons to respect local residents when parking, refrain from blocking any access points to residential homes, and please do not park in any areas that may be required by emergency services. Thank you for your continued support and co-operation.