DERRY may have been relegated from Division One football in 2010 but Louise Glass claims that it’s still too early to write off an Oak Leaf Ulster Championship challenge.

DON’T read too much into Derry’s performances over the first few months of the new football season. Everyone knows that when it comes to Championship football, things are a whole lot different. Results matter from this point on and this is the time to get it right.

Relegation from the top flight might not have been what Damian Cassidy had in mind when it he brought his panel together for the new season, but teams are measured on how they deal with situations they never thought possible, and Damian Cassidy’s team will be measured on how they take to this year’s Championship.

So we are playing Division Two football next season, but so what. Looking back on it, Derry could have and probably should have stayed in Division One this year.

Cassidy knows that and the players know that. Perhaps too much was expected of them when they so easily brushed aside Tyrone on the opening weekend of the league. Against Dublin they were ahead at half-time but fell away during the second thirty, but let’s not forget, it’s not easy playing Dublin in their own backyard.

Then there was the All-Ireland and league champions Kerry down in Tralee, followed by a home defeat to Mayo and another poor performance away to Monaghan.

They were unlucky not to beat Cork at home, but to come away from Galway with victory on the last day of the league, knowing that relegation is almost certain, is no mean feat.

This year’s league is done and dusted, there’s no point in crying over spilled milk, now is the time to look to the summer months and what they might hold.

When Cassidy first took over the county side, he said it was about the summertime and championship football, about getting Derry back into an Ulster final and winning it, for the first time in 12 years.

Granted, as we look ahead to the opening Anglo-Celt clash with Armagh on May 16 the statistics don’t paint a pretty picture. Derry are without an Ulster title since 1998 while Armagh have collected seven in that period.

The last time a Derry captain got his hands on the trophy was back in 1998.

Since then, there has been two All-Ireland semi-final appearances and one quarter-final for Derry thanks to the ‘back door’ system, as well as two Division One league titles including back-to-back league final appearances in the past two years.

It’s success, ‘of a sort’, but it’s the lack of an Ulster Final appearance since 2000, when they lost to Armagh by a solitary point, which has been most concerning for Cassidy.

The league success was welcome but it has clearly been of secondary importance to the Derry coach and this year could be Derry’s best chance to book a place in a first Ulster final since 2000.

If there’s one provincial championship that’s getting harder and harder to predict each year it’s the Ulster one.

No-one could have foreseen Antrim’s almost fairytale rise last year, and while Armagh and Tyrone have dominated proceedings since the turn of the century, almost any of the nine counties in the province could beat the other on their day, Derry included.

Derry have newly promoted Division Two champions Armagh to contend with at home in Celtic Park on Sunday, May 16. The Orchard county are not going to be easy opposition and going on their league run, you’d think they would have to come out on top, but the incentive is there for Damian Cassidy and Derry.

Derry haven’t got past the semi-final stage in the last two years – they won their opening games, beating Donegal in 2008 and Monaghan in 2009 in the quarter-finals, before succumbing to Fermanagh and Tyrone respectively in the last four. But with Tyrone in the other half of the draw, Monaghan await in the quarter-final, with a possible semi-final against the winners of Cavan and Fermanagh.

The opportunity is there, Derry just have to put recent results to one side and go out and grab it.