Last night's dour encounter between Dublin and Derry is not the way Oak Leaf boss Brian McIver likes to see gaelic football played.

But that's what you get when both teams adopt a defensive approach he argues and he believes his team showed progress from last year's league final loss to the metropolitans.

"The last time we were down here we were well over-awed and we were well beaten by Dublin," he told Setanta Sports, "so we wanted to gauge exactly where we are almost a year later.

"So, thankfully, from a defensive point of view, we were very, very strong tonight. We had chances at various stages that had we took them we could have ended up winning the game. But, fair play to Dublin, they ended up winning it themselves.

"We only scored one point in the second-half which is not going to win you anything but we had our chances and, to be honest, we should have been taking some of those at least.

"Listen, both sides set up near enough exactly the same and whenever that's the case it's almost a game of chess.

"Believe me, it's not the way that I would like to see gaelic football played but that's unfortunately the way it is whenever both teams set up you're almost always going to get a game like that which is fairly negative.

"But, we knew ourselves, from a defensive point of view, which is what we really wanted to see today is defensively could we close down the Dublin attack.

"And, to be fair, we did that today."

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