Seán Cavanagh believes that Derry carried the psychological scars of earlier championship defeats into Sunday's All-Ireland quarter-final defeat to Kerry.
The Kingdom ran out 0-15 to 0-10 winners over Derry at Croke Park in a game that never really sparked into life.
Derry in particular were strangely listless and managed to only tack on four points in a dour second-half performance.
Expectations were high for the Northerners coming into the championship, particularly given their league final triumph over Dublin but they failed to ever reach the heights expected of them.
'Since they won the league final they've been very disjointed'
— The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) June 30, 2024
Seán Cavanagh and Cora Staunton discuss Derry's failing in this year's championship #RTEGAA pic.twitter.com/qxgtGUpZYq
A shock defeat in the Ulster championship to Donegal back in April marked the start of a big downward spiral for Derry and they followed that up with All-Ireland defeats to Galway and Armagh.
Speaking on the Sunday Game, Cavanagh claimed that Micky Harte’s men never recovered from that reversal at Celtic Park and that psychologically they haven’t been the same side since then.
"I think Derry played with fear and maybe they sort of showed the scars of the humiliating defeats they probably have taken against big teams," Cavanagh said as he looked back on their quarter-final exit.
"They played that containment style football that ultimately, when it came down to that last 10 or 15 minutes and the game was there to be won, those physical and mental scars really showed up and they weren't ready to win.
"They were almost content to lose the game.
"When they came up against an amazing Donegal performance that night in Celtic Park in the first round of the championship, the humiliation of that game, coupled by the way the Armagh game went and the Galway game, I think they just played with too much fear."
"It wasn't the team that last year went and they scored 1-15 against Kerry in the All-Ireland semi-final and were a kick of the ball away from the final. We were all expecting this Derry team to go a step further this year.
"It just felt like that loss in Celtic Park and the manner of it was just too much."
Fellow Sunday Game panelist Cora Staunton echoed Cavanagh’s thoughts and admitted that she was surprised by just how disjointed Derry looked and how much they faded in the closing stages against Kerry.
"Since they won the league final, they've been very disjointed," she said. "We don't know what's going on in the background, but that's their fourth loss today. I know you can talk about championship structures and that, but they just looked very disjointed.
"Even towards the end of the game, whether it was no energy left after the playoff performance against Mayo last week, they were so flat and didn't seem to even have the energy to press Kerry there in the last few minutes.
"It's back to the drawing board, but after where they came earlier in the league and from last year's semi-final, we were expecting so much more from them."
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