Derry’s Oisin McCloskey out in front of Scott Nicholson, left, and Paul Braniff, Down during last year’s Ulster Senior Hurling Championship

THE levels of frustration among the Derry hurlers have grown with every game they have played this season.

The Oak Leaf hurlers have yet to win a match in league or championship, and last weekend’s defeat to Roscommon was another blow for Tom McLean’s side.

Oisin McCloskey admits that he doesn’t understand why Derry have been losing because they have the squad that should be winning.

Much was made of the ten players who have departed from last year, including the Hinpheys, Liam and Kevin, but McCloskey said that that is not enough of an excuse for their poor run this season

“Even without those players we should be good enough to beat most of these teams,” McCloskey said.

“There are still good hurlers there. We should still have enough there to beat the likes of Roscommon.

“The attitude has been fairly good. It’s hard to put your finger on what went wrong.”

Yet their performance against Roscommon was dismal. They hit 13 wides and just didn’t look like they could match the hunger of the Rossies who ended up winning by 2-20 to 0-15, but could have won by more had they found the net with some of their goal chances.

“It was disappointing, but to be honest, the better team won,” McCloskey said.

“Over the whole 70 minutes they were a different class. We can have no complaints. They were hungrier. We just didn’t get going.

“When you are beat like that it is hard to put your finger on what went wrong. We were never at their level.”

That is a concern for Derry hurling fans because Roscommon are supposed to be a level below Derry. They played in Division 3A this year, while Derry were in 2A.

However, Roscommon earned promotion to 2B, while Derry were relegated so the two teams were perhaps closer to each other than their original league standings suggested.

“On paper we were favourites in everybody’s minds. We knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. We hadn’t won any matches during the league. It is hard to get out of that mindset when you are not winning.

“We just didn’t play well, but we know that we can play a lot better.”

McCloskey said that there was very little discussion in the changing rooms immediately after the game. Instead they would wait until their midweek session to go back over what happened ahead of Saturday’s clash against Down.

“Hopefully we can get it together. We know we can beat these teams,” he said.

“We have beaten Down before, but it is always tight between the two of us. But we know we are good enough to beat them.”