the hosts unceremoniously exited the All-Ireland.<\/a><\/p>\n“I’m disappointed, we didn’t deserve to win so we can have no complaints,” Meenagh told BBC Sport NI.<\/p>\n
“We put a huge amount of effort into trying to get a lift for a performance. It was very difficult after the Monaghan and Armagh games, and ultimately we weren’t good enough, so that’s the season closed now.”<\/p>\n
Despite going in level at the interval, Meenagh felt the warning signs were already there for Derry after Meath dominated possession throughout the opening period.<\/p>\n
“If we had any return in the ball at all from both sets of kick-outs, we were scoring fairly easily,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We said that at half-time, but it didn’t change. They still dominated primary possession, and when they’re taking over half of our possession and winning over 80% of their own, that leaves us in a difficult position to win the game.”<\/p>\n
As Derry pressed for a response in the closing stages, Meenagh felt the physical toll of playing without sustained possession eventually caught up with his side.<\/p>\n
“When you’re chasing the game for a lot of it, then you’re going to the ball for a lot of it. It’s energy-sapping,” he said.<\/p>\n
“They were the better side and, as the game wore on, they started to get their scores easier.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Derry manager Ciaran Meenagh admitted his side could have “no complaints” after their All-Ireland Championship campaign came to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-499055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}