By Michael McMullan

AS weeks go, this will be as tough as it gets in the Derry hurling camp. Out of the frying pan and into the fire as the Oaks prepare to face Kerry on Sunday in Tralee.

Manager Johnny McGarvey didn’t mince his words after their 19-point defeat at home to Down. It wasn’t good enough. Yes, Down are the fancied team to win the league but his side didn’t do themselves justice.

After being level at 0-4 each, it was Down who ravaged Derry over the next seven minutes. It was the same after half-time with two goals.

“Look, it just wasn’t good enough,” McGarvey said of last weekend. “The amount of breaking ball that we didn’t get, balls going inside, boys trying to let the ball run past them.

“Maybe they were trying to play summer hurling in the winter, just too much of what we were doing wasn’t good enough and we got beat out the gate.”

Cormac O’Doherty has been ruled out of the rest of the league. Ruairí Ó Mianáin is nursing an injury from the club season and Jack Cassidy has withdrawn from the panel to pursue a career in the NFL.

Paddy Kelly and Eamon Conway had both picked up knocks in a challenge game with Antrim, leaving them on the injured list.

There was a return for Deaglan Foley on Saturday but they lost Gerald Bradley during the first half. McGarvey was short almost half of the 20 players who played in last season’s Christy Ring final defeat to Kildare.

“The players that aren’t playing are not an excuse for getting beat the way we get beat,” he said of last Saturday.

“There’s not much we can do about it. We have to play with the players that we have, we’re certainly better than we showed but, look, you put it behind you and you move on.

“We wanted to play at this (Division Two) level to try and push ourselves on. We can’t worry about players that aren’t available to play.”

After Sunday, Derry have a week off for the league break and McGarvey welcomes it to get some of his walking wounded closer to action.

“The (Kerry) match is next Sunday so we just had to have a chat, dust ourselves down and get on with it again,” he said.

After that, Derry have Kildare, Meath and Donegal coming down the tracks. With two teams facing relegation, getting points on the table sooner than later is a priority. After that, the Christy Ring Cup will come into view. But not yet. Anything they take from Tralee will be a bonus.