Aged 28, Conor Glass is delighted to get the chance to play for Derry in the McKenna Cup following a one-year hiatus in pre-season competitions in 2025
The return of the Dr McKenna Cup has been lauded as a chance for county managers to run their eye over a host of up-and-coming players before the more competitive action gets going in the National League.
New Derry boss Ciaran Meenagh is likely to give several new players game time in their forthcoming ties against Donegal and Antrim, although one McKenna Cup debutant will be a familiar sight to Oak Leaf fans.
It will be difficult not to spot the flame-haired 6”2 midfielder, but Conor Glass has, remarkably, yet to feature in the pre-season competition for Derry.
Glen’s rise to prominence in the Ulster and All-Ireland Club series in recent years has meant that successive Derry managers have been without the Maghera men for the first few games of the season, although they won the last renewal under Mickey Harte back in 2024.
Now aged 28, Glass is delighted to get the chance to play for Derry in the McKenna Cup following a one-year hiatus in pre-season competitions in 2025.
“I’ve never played in the McKenna Cup – it’ll be a first for me,” said Glass.
“It was a good problem to have, obviously, when you are going well (with Glen), but it will be good to get a bit of game time before the League starts.
“I’ve always been a fan of them (pre-season competitions). It’s the thing I looked about it is, teams are having challenge games anyway this time of year. So having structured games with inter-county referees, crowds as well, it’s only a good thing leading into the round of the League.
“It’s not about slogging players down 60, 70 minutes. It’s about bringing in new personnel.
“It is about how they stand up, because if they can stand up in McKenna Cup games, there’s a fair chance they can do that in the inter-county stage.
“It gives the fans something to watch in early January too – I think it’s fantastic it has been brought back after last year.”
Harte came in for some sharp criticism for bringing the Glen players back the week after they’d won the All-Ireland Club title against St Brigid’s for the 2024 League campaign, albeit Derry went on to win the Division One title that spring.
The Watty Graham’s lost out to Newbridge in the Derry decider last season and were beaten 4-15 to 1-14 by Magherafelt at the semi-final stage this time around.
That has meant a faster than usual return to the county set-up for Glass, but he admits he has enjoyed some down time and is looking forward to the new season.
“It’s probably been a blessing in disguise. I haven’t been used to a break in the last three, four, five years. So pretty much ever since I came back from Oz, I haven’t had a break,” said Glass.
“So it’s been good to have a bit of downtime, but not too much downtime because I want to be playing matches.
“You obviously want to be playing matches on the biggest days. So hopefully it’s not a common theme every year now.
“I wouldn’t say it was difficult because it’s obviously a good situation to be in because if you’re running from competition to competition, it obviously means you’re doing well on both.
“So as players, we don’t really think too much about it. You just get on with it, to be honest.
“It’s a stage where you just sort of maintain your fitness. You probably don’t get any fitter. You just maintain from each team to the other. So having a bit of pre-season now, it’s been refreshing because you can work on a few things.”
Despite losing to Donegal in the Ulster preliminary round and exiting the All-Ireland SFC at the group stages, there was a sense that Derry finished 2025 on a stronger footing than they started.
They will be hoping to bounce back after suffering relegation from Division One and the challenge for Meenagh will be to get Derry back contending for silverware after back-to-back Ulster titles in 2022 and 2023.
Glass, an All-Star in 2022, says the outlook is positive and there’s no reason why the Oak Leafers can’t emerge as All-Ireland contenders again.
“Thinking back to ’23, we were a kick of a ball away against Kerry and that was under Ciaran Meenagh as well,” added the Glen clubman.
“He’s said that to us. We weren’t far away and we should be challenging.
“The thing about Derry football is we’ve had a very upward trajectory over the last five years.
“We went from Division Four to Division One to win Division One. The growth in that. . . the line is drastically upwards. There’s going to come a time that you’re going to hit a bump in the road.
“It’s going to go back down, but we do see ourselves as a top team. Although we were relegated to Division Two last year, but that’s not a bad thing. Two out of the last three winners, Armagh and Dublin, came from Division Two.
“If we can get a really good bounce through the McKenna Cup and into the first round against Meath in Croke Park, who knows where it could take us?
“Once you get a bit of confidence and a bit of swagger back in the team, you don’t know where it could take us.
“We’re just focussing on Meath in round one because they’ve proved last year they are one of the top teams in the country.
