Karl McKaigue says only a concerted effort from everybody in the county can stop the rot in Derry.

The downwardly-mobile Oak Leafers have suffered an unceremonious slide from the top flight to the basement of the national football league in successive seasons and McKaigue is calling for a united front in order to try to turn their flagging fortunes around:

"It's something we have to look at as a county as a whole, within the structures at underage, the schools, the county structures, club structures," the Slaughtneil clubman comments in The Irish News.

"Something has obviously gone wrong, for Derry to slide in the space of four seasons from Division One to Division Four. We find ourselves in Division Four after a poor league campaign this year.

"At the start of the season, a lot of bookies were tipping Derry as the favourites to get out of Division Three, but for whatever reason, we found ourselves in the next tier down.

"In relation to club and county, there has been a lot of debate in terms of fixtures over the past few years, especially around Ulster championship time. Say Derry were to lose the first round of the Ulster championship and go into the Qualifiers, there would be a lot of lads thinking, 'Ach, Derry aren't going to do much this year', and they would be dropping away from the county panel.

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