MICKEY Harte admits “it will take time” for Saturday night’s humbling at the hands of Donegal to sink in – but has backed his Derry side to come out all guns blazing in the All-Ireland Championship.
The Oak Leafs had their sights set on lifting the Anglo-Celt Cup for a third time in-a-row, but were stunned by a four goal show from Jim McGuinness’s men at Celtic Park.
So while the Tir Chonaill advance to Sunday’s semi-final with Harte’s native Tyrone, Derry must now wait until the weekend of May 18/19 before getting their campaign back up and running.
“You can say that there’a a bit of time now alright, but it will take time for that to sink in,” said Harte.
“All of those players there are very disappointed, they came here expecting to put in a really good performance for the thousands who came out to see them, and particularly after winning the Division One title a few weeks ago, the expectation was high and rightly so.
“But we didn’t deliver so we all have to hold our hands up and look in the mirror and see how can we be so much better in the All-Ireland series, because people expect high quality performances from this outfit.
“The Ulster Championship is no longer ours to play for, the good thing is we’re still in the All-Ireland series and hopefully we can learn plenty from this game and bring that learning to the round games we’re going to play in.
“These things happen, it’s over now, it’s history, we can’t do anything about it other than learn from it, and sure if we do that, there’ll be some good in it.”
The three-time All-Ireland winner - who says forward Cormac Murphy is “three or four weeks” away after picking up a quad injury - also pinpointed a couple of crucial second half misses from Emmet Bradley and Donnacha Gilmore as the wheels came off Derry’s challenge.
“It was a competitive game with lots of good football in it - Donegal probably played more good football than we did, but I think we played some very good football as well.
“I felt when we had it down to four points after a very bad spell, we missed two chances to make it a one score game and that was crucial in the end of it all.”
