City of Derry coach McMaster building for the future

McMaster, who has taken the coaching position on a full time basis this season after their attempts to bring in South African Phil Pretorius failed, concedes that he’s looking at all aspects of the club’s structures.

This year Richard McCarter will be a player/backs coach and Chris Cooper has been added to the coaching set-up, while Jason Mitchell will be asked to learn more about the game this campaign and McMaster believes this show be the way the club goes forward.

“After the Home Office put pay to bringing Phil in, I suppose Plan B was that the club came to me and as I was in as Director of Coaching, so it seems the natural thing as I had recruited all the players and was planning to take the first few weeks of pre-season, because Phil was to come in on the 21st of August and the club asked me to take the reins and I would never see City of Derry stuck,” he said.

“Part of my role in the original appointment was to build a legacy of indigenous coaches at the club, so I look at the player base we have the experience we have at the club.

“James Dougherty was with us last year and he will remain as coach analyst, we have brought in Joe Gallanagh as strength and conditioning coach, who was S&C coach for Munster Seniors for three years a few years ago, so he has unbelievable experience and expertise there.

“I have kept Jason Mitchell as Forwards coach, he has a great rapport with the players and he’s gaining a deeper understanding of the game and part of this year will be to deepen that understanding further.

“Richard is in transition and he has been brought in as player coach for the Backs, as everyone knows he has played at provincial

international level, he has played for the Baa-Baas and that’s tremendous and then the other guy who we have started to develop is Chris Cooper.

“He has brought Chris in and he has got a role in terms of coaching the line-out and again this is us planning for the future.

“It’s isn’t a sort term fix, this is us saying ‘what’s going to happen this club over the next five to ten years’ and that was to be part of my brief and it probably remains part of my brief in the role that I have got now, we want to bring coaches through.”

This weekend City of Derry start their AIL Division 2B campaign with a trip to MU Barnhall and McMaster is looking to get off to a winning start as he’s aiming for the title this season.

“It’s a results driven game and our goal is to get promotion, we want to win the league and we have recruited to do that,” he added.

“We were very successful on the recruitment front and again the money has gone out of the local game at amateur level, so it wasn’t a case of getting the cheque book out, it was the case of selling the club on the coaching that they were going to get and the facilitates that we have to offer and to be honest it wasn’t a hard sell.”