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[Glass could do with a natural midfield partner aswell, and possibly a back up aswell if Glass gets injured. McFaul is brilliant, but not a natural midfielder at county level. Would be great to be able to utilise McFaul in the half forward line & the likes of McKinless, Tad, CD & other chipping in with the odd point from defence.]

Gallagher is exactly what Derry needed when he came in & over the next year or 2. He will sort the culture, sort the crap, get a consistent panel, give game time to players who will play 10+ years of county football (Murray & Downey) & stop the revolving door.

The football he plays will always limit Derry, however people need to be realistic about Derry over the next couple of years. They shouldn't be winning Ulster titles & are probably a Divison 2 team at present, if Gallagher gets them to Division 1 in the next couple of years he's done some job. I think it'll be the next Derry manager who realistically should be looking at Ulsters etc.

Derry still lacking the forwards for me. McGuigan is the talisman but IMO he still gets kept fairly quiet a lot in county football (maybe because teams can double up on him because of the lack of threat elsewhere) Also physically small up front. Laughlin looks like a great talent & is motoring well however will take a couple of years to really get into his stride. Benny is a work horse but not a big scoring threat at county level, more of an industrious footballer for Derry. Niall Toner is a whippet but quite small, Paul Cassidy looks to have gone up a level but is also very slight. Niall Loughlin was quiet on Saturday, finished off a good team move and is a great option for frees. Derry are going to need to get at least 3 scoring forwards on to the pitch to start challenging bigger teams.  Lachlan could get there in a couple of years, as could Paul Cassidy potentially. Niall Loughlin also has the ability to step up and add more scores to his game.

Glass could do with a natural midfield partner aswell, and possibly a back up aswell if Glass gets injured. McFaul is brilliant, but not a natural midfielder at county level. Would be great to be able to utilise McFaul in the half forward line & the likes of McKinless, Tad, CD & other chipping in with the odd point from defence.

What are your options here though? If pushing McFaul to Half Forward it's probably Tad or E Bradley? Maybe Oisin McWilliams? No real obvious answer for me. I'd like to see McKinless kept at 6.
I'd be content with the named starting defense against Down come championship to be honest. Might get slated for this and i'm actually a fan of how they play but one thing I wasn't sure of with Tad at half back was the tackling against a good opposition forward (same applied to Ethan D too). Whilst appreciating what they offer from there on the ball i'd rather see them at Half Forward.

Glass mf isn't big enough for the top end of football. None of the options are. l was really surprised he didn't take a look at Tohil at mf in the Mc kenna cup. If I know how Mc Faul can function at mf you can bet Gallagher does to, so what did he/we gain. 6:5 and mobile, he had nothing to loose by checking it out. Opportunity lost

Yeah I think that post significantly underestimates Clare and Derry. Derry are a different beast under Gallagher.  I think Clare could well be better than Cork as it stands and that will be interesting. For me it's Galway and then Roscommon maybe favourites but Derry or Meath may have a say there.

Clare would be better than Offaly and arguably Cork. They'll give most teams in this division their fill of it I think. Very interesting division looking at it.

In terms of Derry, we were not great at the weekend but still won comfortably. We should improve as the league goes on with the return of the Slaughtneil contingent.
It's unfair I feel to judge Down on that performance either as they are missing the Kilcoo lads and the new manager has had a very short time with them. It wouldn't surprise me if they improve drastically when Kilcoo finishes out the club championship. It may be too late though to avoid relegation as they have Galway up next (I think). 2 defeats from 2 would spell then end I think.

For me Galway were always the favourite for the division, but outside of that I think you could argue anyone is capable of beating anyone else. I feel it will be a very competitive division.

For Derry, I'd be happy to comfortably retain Div2 status and get a really well settled team in place for the championship to give Ulster a push, which is wide open this year in my opinion.

Ulster wide open with the the all Irelands champions on it

BTW the S'neil contingent were playing Saturday evening. Paudie tadd the only one missing, injured

Comfortably win, but the way we play has a ceiling. There is no kicking of the ball into the attack. That means keeping two players up front for that option. This is Tyrone football under Harte and it has had its day. Delighted to see us progressing again, but Gallagher has his limits.

Mc Faul for Boston?

Brilliant from Sneil hurlers today

Dunloy after all their talking, couldn't back it up. Want Sneil blah blah. Sneil way to strong and better hurling. I don't think Dunloy have learned alot from two years ago. I said it then and will repeat it, they need a football coach to teach them how to use their body in tackles. The ref I thought calved  at making the call on a straight forward second  yellow to give a red to Dunloy. He knew what he was at instead of doing his job. Sneils running game in the second half was brilliant

You know its a good question. Sean Marty for me at number 1 easily. How he is not in your top 3 🤷‍♂️ Played at a level consistently above the other three in my view, illustrated with him being the most  capped player on the international rules series.  He seldom hid in big games against Tyrone or Armagh in the championship when they were in their prime. All forwards dreaded to see him coming to mark them. 2. Mc Flynn and 3. P Bradley

Glen impressive yesterday, Slaughneil will be their first proper test.

Why will the diehard Ballinderry men who are lining their pockets throughout Ulster not go back and manage their own club?

They are, the lads taking them came back from being with other clubs. I think all of them are involved in some capacity at underage, so lets not spin mistruths.

You do realise when your vaccinated you can equally pass on the virus. Its also recognised the vaccine only treats one strain, it won't treat the new variants. Protect the old, the obese and folk with underlying conditions, after that 99.9% of the population will be grand.

There's gonna be a certain amount of the population who refuse to get vaccinated. They should however just stay at home if they get ill and refuse medical intervention.

Why should they stay at home and why would anyone refuse medical treatment?

People should not oppose medical intervention that benefits society as well as themselves and then use medical intervention that only benefits themselves, and takes up a bed from someone else.

A common societal habit is smoking, I am sure smokers take up lots of medical time and money, all medical practitioners warn against smoking, should smokers be denied medical intervention that only benefits themselves, something they willingly self inflicted on themselves against all medical advice?

They shouldn't get free treatment on the NHS if their illness is self inflicted.

What an utterly idiotic argument you are all making. Hitler would live you guys. What next the obese folk from eating, anorexia, drug addiction people who end up with copd due to the work they did. Ffs listen to yourselves

Defense easier than attack. That's a hard selection to be honest...


Cluxton
Fitzsimmons
O'Carroll
McMahon
Small
O'Sullivan
McCaffrey
Fenton
McCarthy
Connolly
Kilkenny
Flynn
Bernard Brogan
O'Callaghan
Dean Rock

It's not easy to pick a better one than that.

Did that 15 every actually played together? Don't think it as Flynn & O Carroll had gone before Con arrived?

I guess not many on this board have had covid and play. One of our family members had covid, literally nothing of note other than a sniffle for a few days. Even with having literally nothing of obvious to note it took two weeks before he/she was running at the level he/she was used to. Infact any player I know who has had covid irrespective of how bad they got it, all reported the same thing, at least two weeks before they could run normally with breathing. So you can be assured any player who had covid in the week prior to that game would not have been playing at that level, as they couldn't.

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/seán-moran-open-feel-to-football-championship-may-signal-a-transformation-1.4632097?mode=amp

Since their most recent All-Ireland success in 2014 Kerry they have played Dublin four times in championship, winning none – and extending the sequence to six in succession, a blue stretch unparalleled in relations between the counties; Dublin had never previously won more than two championship matches in a row against Kerry

Tyrone getting to 3 in the noughties is more impressive now reading that.  Kerrys to lose this year.

Not overly as Dublins have all been through the front door. No second chances for them making it more impressive.

Antrim were able to score a few points into injury time on Saturday to win a massive game, they must have been training to to have such fitness levels at the stage of the game.