By Niall Gartland

GARETH McKinless was singing the praises of Derry manager Rory Gallagher after he masterminded a stunning victory over Tyrone in last Sunday’s Ulster Championship quarter-final.

Easing to a 11-point victory over the All-Ireland champions on their home turf was some achievement, and it was the end result of brilliant tactical and psychological preparation by Gallagher, as well as the tireless efforts of players like McKinless and a host of others.

Ballinderry man McKinless, who’s right on the coalface of the Derry-Tyrone rivalry, paid tribute to Gallagher after the game:

“I don’t use the word genius lightly but the man’s a genius, he’s football mad, he knows everything inside out. People were saying to me during the week, there’s a few players away and injured and things like that, but we knew we were completely ready for the game and all we had to do was go out and execute the gameplan and that’s what we did and it’s brilliant.”

Derry had only one Ulster Championship match in ten years before the game, an amazing statistic flagged up by Irish News journalist Cahair O’Kane before the game.

McKinless says they’re now getting the rewards for their hard work.

“It’s unbelievable and we’d mentioned it among ourselves in the group, that’s a mad stat to only win one game. We’d played the likes of Donegal and Tyrone a few times but we didn’t deserve to win those games. But in the last two or three years we put in a lot of work and it was unbelievable to get the win.”

Derry were rightly perceived as an improving team, but the hype bubble threatened to burst after a couple of disappointing results at the tail-end of the league.

McKinless said: We knew ourselves we didn’t have our full team for those games so we weren’t too worried. A the same time we were a bit bitter about not going up, because we knew we could dine at the top table and it showed against Tyrone.”

The challenge is now to build on their seismic win over Tyrone. The last time they got the better of the Red Hands was in 2006, but they ended up being dumped out of the qualifiers by Longford in the same season. They face a high-flying Monaghan side next weekend and McKinless knows it won’t be easy.

“Anybody who watches Ulster football knows there isn’t a kick of the ball between a lot of the teams, especially the top four or two, so we’ll now focus on the next day and we know Monaghan will be a massive test for us.”