Lynch aims for top half

Having over the past two years given their all to finally regain their AIL status, Lynch wants his entire squad to gain experience over the next few weeks before they travel to Connemara, on Saturday, October 2 for their opening AIL Division Three encounter.

"The cut throat nature of Junior One meant we had to win from day one and it was very hard to bring on and develop players, because you only had 17 in your squad, I think in about 50 odd junior games, I had back reserves to just five games," he explained.

"But we have a chance in our Ulster League campaign to give everyone a fair crack and see who can make the grade for our final squad.

"The great thing about it also is that the Ulster branch have shown some great intervention, maybe it's long overdue but they have decided to have the Seconds play before the Firsts, so this season the Seconds will play at 1pm and we'll start at 2.45pm; it means that your top 30 players are going to get games, you aren't going to have players sitting around on the bench.

"That decision has been long overdue but well done to the Ulster branch for that intervention."

The Kiwi admits that despite not having the fear of relegation from the AIL this season, he and his coaching staff believe the squad is good enough to even look at possible promotion.

"We have the security of knowing we'll be in the AIL next year as well, but it won't change our philosophy, to try and explore the wide channels, we were allowed to do that at junior level, so now we'll need to up our game in the senior ranks.

"It can be quite dire in the Third Division, but we are looking to carry on with our open and expansive style and if we can do that with a degree of accuracy then we are thinking of a top half finish, which would be great.

"In fact if you are in the top half then you are in with a shot at promotion, with the top four teams getting up to 2B next year, but we haven't sat down with the team and set out our goal settings for the forthcoming season yet, but as a management we feel our side is capable of finishing in the top half."

Lynch also wants to keep Derry's good record of bringing young players from under age rugby right up to the Firsts.

"We are looking to develop as many players as we can, in fact we are looking to develop a good core of maybe 30 players with AIL experience over the next few years.

"We aren't going to be just focusing on trying to win AIL games, we certainly will be looking to bring the club on, because there is no use aiming for targets, which aren't going to benefit your club long term, so although we have a good bunch of guys and some of them have been fairly patient, so we'll be looking to give them their chance.

"We are all looking forward to the challenge and the good thing this season is that we don't need to motivate the boys, because it was both mentally and physically tough in Junior One and the boys put in a lot of effort to get where we are now."

Although the Judges Road men haven't added any new experienced players, they have signed youngsters David Smyth and Richard Beard from YMCA and Lynch believes bringing players through can benefit the club in the long term.

"Our priority was to try and maintain the majority of our players from last season and try to recruit for our Seconds. I think we have a talented enough bunch of players at the club, so we are happy with our retention and we have a lot of good young players who have come on board.

"We also have a few players coming back like Tom Patton from Queen's and he's a big plus, we have obviously been able to sign a few of the YMCA's better players.

"Unfortunately two of our best products Richard Brady and Jack Caithness who are coming back from university and wanted to stay with us but are unable to find work here, so they are only here for a few weeks.

"Richard has Second Division experience at Trinity and he can only play for us until around the end of the September as he's then off to the USA as it's the only place where he can get a job, while Jack is back from Newcastle, but is only here to the middle of November.

"But I think this problem is nationwide, I have spoken to a number of coaches and they feel the majority of players they have lost is not that they are going to other clubs, it's because they are looking for work."