Derry's Ciaran McFaul expects Longford to deploy a similar defensive system to that used by Donegal.

The Oak Leaf County crashed out of the Ulster championship at the hands of the Tir Chonail men on May 25th but wing forward McFaul is hoping they can extend their season when hosting Longford in the first round of the Qualifiers this Saturday:

"After the Donegal game, we sat down and we discussed what went wrong and we have been trying to work on that in training, so hopefully we can show on Saturday that we've learned from our mistakes," the Glen clubman told The Irish News.

"The Donegal defeat was hard to take, especially after coming through the league in really good form. We knew that beating them would be a big task and it was probably the ten-minute period at the start of the second half that killed us.

"Longford play very similar to Donegal in that they are defensive and they get numbers behind the ball.

"At the minute, people are saying that Derry can't break defensive systems down, particularly after watching the Donegal game where we shut down and let them back into it.

"We had never really come up against a defensive team this year because Division One was full of attack-minded teams and I have no doubt Longford will come at us with all guns blazing." Tweet

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