Derry’s Padraig McGrogan has had his season come to an end as he suffered an ACL injury, just days after the defeat to Donegal.
McGrogan said it was a “freak” injury in training, with the Derry defender set for an operation in June.
A consistent for Derry in the past couple of seasons, McGrogan will be missed as they prepare for the All-Ireland series, with Galway first up in the group.
“I had a fairly bad injury on the Thursday after the Donegal game just in training. It was the ACL so I won’t be taking part in much more now for this season. There’s no hiding it now, it was done a couple of weeks ago and it just is what it is.
“No operation yet, hopefully the start of June and then it’ll be just a case of getting on with the rehab and getting it done as best as I can.
“It was something I’ve done a million times before. I just went to turn inside, and I just knew right away that I’d done something. It was just a freak accident.
“It can happen so easily. You never fear it, but I felt 100pc the whole way through training and it just happened suddenly, it was just a freak thing.”
McGrogan said he will stay part of the squad for the summer, as Derry look to overcome their Ulster quarter-final defeat to Donegal.
In a shock defeat, Donegal brought Derry down from the highs of winning Division One, which has lead to the first break Derry have had all year.
“It’s been a couple of weeks so plenty of time to digest it. It’s just another game, only we lost that one. Watching back the video is painful, but you can see exactly why we lost the game.
“When we start to make these adjustments we just have to hope we learn from what we got wrong and get better from it.
“We were probably just over-aggressive and nearly silly in the end. We’ve analysed it, and we still have to press the kick-out, you can’t go the opposite direction and just give it up, but we’ve watched it back, and we’re working on it and we will be working on it for a long time like most teams now.”
After the game, much was made of the kick-out strategy of both teams, as Jim McGuinness rolled back the years with how Donegal set up, as they scored four goals on their way to victory.
As Derry prepares for a tough All-Ireland group, that will feature Galway, the losers of Donegal and Armagh and Westmeath, McGrogan praises the experience of Mickey Harte to see them through a challenging period.
“He experienced it quite a bit with Tyrone maybe getting beat in provincial finals, semi-finals, wherever it was, and maybe taking the backdoor route to All-Ireland finals.
“But look, he knows the story by now. Something that he said that always sticks with me is that you can’t get too high or too low in this game. You just have to prepare for each game as it comes.
“The minute you get too high, somebody knocks you off the pedestal, and when you get too low, you’re just no good to yourself or your teammates.”
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
