Mixture of relief and frustration after Inishowen IFC derby draw  

Malin manager Michael Byrne was undecided on the emotion he should feel after his side came from behind to snatch a late and dramatic 0-10 to 1-7 IFC draw against Buncrana. 

Malin posted five wides and dropped a number of long-range strikes into Buncrana goalkeeper Adam Harrigan’s arms. 

“I thought we were very wasteful in the first-half,” said Byrne after. “I felt we left scores behind us at the break.

“Buncrana were putting us under pressure. Maybe we just didn’t go one more phase and get into that shooting area”. 

Christy McLaughlin had broke down the right-hand side and scored a fantastic goal for Malin, 15 minutes into the game. And that three-pointer propped the visitors into a 1-1 to 0-2 lead. 

“You would have thought that would have kicked us on. But we flatlined a bit after the goal and Buncrana responded with two  points in a row to cancel out the goal to leave it all square at the midpoint”. 

Meanwhile Buncrana’s Peter McLaughlin, who was at his highfielding best in Sunday’s Inishowen derby at the Scarvey, says his side also harboured regrets from the weekend that they didn’t see the contest out - once they got their noses in front. 

“We were three points up with four or five minutes to go. We got a little bit slack and we gave a couple of balls away and Malin got in for the scores to level it.

“The two sides were poor in the first half and I’m sure Malin would say the same. We gave away a lot of balls cheaply.

“But it was a big game and a local derby and we were all a bit nervous.

In the second-half I thought the game picked up. Malin were well set up so we had to be patient. 

“They were hard to break down so we had to hold possession. We ran down the middle a few times and we were just gobbled up and turned over. 

“We got on top in the middle third in the second-half and we went three points clear. We should have kicked on at that stage and added another couple of scores and put them away.

“But in fairness to Malin they came back at us in the last five minutes and they got three points on the bounce there at the end to level it.”