City of Derry Head Coach Richard McCarter gives his verdict on the Irish Junior Cup victory over Connemara at Judges Road.
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00:00 Richard, the last time he's played in the Irish Junior Cup it was a very dramatic game,
00:06 13 years on, another very dramatic day but he's got the win.
00:09 Yeah, that last sentence is the crucial part. A win is a win at the end of the day and we
00:14 haven't played well today if we're honest. To score 31 points and not be happy but being
00:19 the quarter final draw is the main thing so we have to take that positive from it.
00:23 He's well on top among the forwards, both sets of back lines look very, very dangerous
00:29 but there were plenty of errors too.
00:30 There were a lot of errors and every time we scored you felt there was a bit of a dead
00:35 end between the two teams but we conceded literally immediately after the three tries
00:39 that we scored. It was always a fairly tight knit game and they've been tucked right to
00:42 the end and I think if the game had gone on another few minutes we'd have been really
00:46 hanging on by the coattails but as I say we showed a lot of character and guts even if
00:50 it wasn't a great performance and as I say to be in the quarter final I would rather
00:54 be in Irish shoes than come back down the road with a heroic defeat like they have.
00:58 Cup ties are for winning and as you say it was probably more to do with the actual character
01:03 of the team displayed than any great rugby team.
01:05 It did and you're going to have games like that, it's not always going to be free flowing
01:09 and maybe not giving Connemara enough credit, I thought they were a very good side, they
01:14 were well drilled, they played good rugby and they put us under more pressure than most
01:18 teams have so far this season so you're going to get games where you have to grind out results
01:22 and we certainly had to do that today.
01:23 Now you're into the, as you mentioned, a couple of victories, you all of a sudden could find
01:28 yourself in a semi final or final this competition so you've got the win, move on to the quarter
01:33 finals, put it on the back burner for a week or two?
01:36 Yeah that's the way we have to look at it, I think the next round is in the middle of
01:39 November so we've got a few matches in between but we'll not care how we got there in the
01:45 next round, it's the fact that we're in the draw and we're in the quarter final and the
01:48 next target is to get to the semi final.
01:50 And as you say, regardless of how you played, you've got to win, back to league next week,
01:56 it's nice to be winning when you're not playing pot at your best.
01:58 Absolutely, it's so crucial to win these matches and especially when you haven't played well
02:03 and I don't want to sound like a gloom merchant but I've told the fellas that it can't always
02:07 be a pat on the back after every victory, we're at a level now and we're striving to
02:10 achieve standards that we've got to be honest with each other and they know they didn't
02:14 turn up at times today but they showed a hell of a lot of guts when it really mattered at
02:17 the end.
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