Mickey Harte has cited winning tomorrow night's Dr McKenna Cup clash against UUJ as "critical" for his team.

The six-in-a-row chasing Red Hands suffered a five-point defeat in their opening game against Cavan, losing ace forward Connor McAliskey for the season in the process, and their supremo feels a response is needed against the Belfast students in Omagh.

"It's very critical for us," Harte told The Irish News.

"Obviously we have to win or we have no hope of qualifying. If we win it depends on score average, but the bottom line is that we want to win it and the last game as well.

"We want momentum going into Division One, of course we do.

"We want to win these games, we want to be in this competition as long as possible and today was a big setback towards that ambition."

On the newcomers into his panel, Harte added: "I think they'll learn from these games and they'll learn what's required to play at this level - they contributed well at times and they showed their inexperience at times as well but that happened to a lot of the players.

"Maybe it's that early season syndrome where you're not at the top of your game - maybe you haven't enough ball-handling skills done under pressure and people are making some elementary mistakes."

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