Richard McCarter thrilled City of Derry are back on the training pitch

McCarter, along with head coach Paul O’Kane took training, splitting the squad into groups to comply with COVID-19 Club Safety protocol.

“We had 30 players who attended training last Thursday, so we split them into two groups of 15 with Paul taking some conditioning training and I had the second group of lads for a few conditioning games and we were able to work away for an hour,” he stated.

“Although it’s still very strange, as you have to go in the front door of the club, sanitise your hands, sign in and everything and then go out the back door, so yeah while it’s all strange, it’s good to get back to some sense of normality and hopefully if everyone can keep being sensible and keep doing what they’re supposed to do we can loosen restrictions even more in the coming weeks or months.

“But yeah, it was good to be back and good to see everyone again. Even the majority of the new boys came down on Thursday and a couple of the boys were travelling from Randalstown and Magherafelt, so it’s a big commitment from them, even at this stage of the season. It’s good to see that they are so keen and ready to go.”

IRFU club competitions have been modified for the forthcoming season to focus on player welfare and COVID-19 risk mitigation.

The 2020/21 season will be split into two stages - stage one will keep all friendlies and competitive matches localised between September and December 2020 and stage two will see a reformatted Energia All-Ireland League commence in January.

The Energia All-Ireland League element has a start date of January 9th, 2021. It will consist of a nine-game league season with semi-finals and finals in all men’s and women’s divisions.

The size and make-up of each 10-team division remains unchanged from the finishing positions of 2019-20. As it is a truncated format, no promotion or relegation will take place.

With the Judges Road men adding a host of new faces to their side, McCarter feels that with no fear of facing the drop, it may help the new look squad.

“We are going to have an extended Ulster League where we’ll play each other home and away, with also the Senior Cup and then the All Ireland will start again in January, but that will be only a single season, where we’ll just play each once, rather than home and away,” he added.

“So with no promotion or relegation that might be a positive for us because we can go out relatively pressure free, but at the same time you’re travelling to Cork to play a glorified friendly, as well.

“Look, if the new format is set in stone then yes it does feel an awful long way to travel for something that doesn’t really matter at the end of the day, but there’s still some talk that they might have a regionalised All Ireland League, but at the minute we are told we are in the same league as last year and playing each other once, with no repercussions at the end of the season.”

McCarter also admits because of the new look season the Ulster Senior League games will be very important.

“The Ulster Senior league games will probably bring a bit more importance because that’s going to be the majority of our season and you don’t want to lose to local teams,” he explained.

“The way the Ulster teams are so spread out within the All Ireland League, we’ll be playing against teams as high as 2A probably up against the likes of Rainey and sides like that, so it will be tough for us, but at the same time it’s going to be competitive and it gives us something to aim towards.

“Yes as I said there’s probably less pressure on us especially as we are trying to establish and develop the squad.

“As we have had a lot of incomings and we have had a few out goings, none that will really trouble the first squad too much, but the guys that are coming in will all be there or there abouts, so this season is a good chance for us to rotate and give players a good opportunity.

“We’ll be trying to implement patterns and plays and get everybody comfortable and while I say there’s no real pressure, we have to set standards as well and I don’t want to be going out every Saturday and getting beat, then turning around saying that it doesn’t matter, because it does matter.

“So if we want to set standards we have to drive to the players whether there’s promotion or relegation or not, we want to have a good competitive squad of 25 or 30 players challenging for positions every week, so hopefully that drives them on and it can mean a positive season.”

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