Brendan Rogers and Shane McGuigan and co. are back in with Slaughtneil.
They were back in very sharpish after their All-Ireland SFC loss to Kerry. No holidays or sabatticals. Not for Rogers anyway.
For him, a change is as good as a rest and he says that between picking up the hurl for the first time in a long time and getting back in with his club-mates, that was the only change he needed to get back into the swing of it all.
“I thoroughly enjoy getting to go back to play with the lads you grew up with, with those lads having been sending you good luck messages all year.
“I don’t really feel the need to get away, it’s just a love of playing for the club.
“The biggest worry was how I was going to get my touch back for hurling,” he says.
“Change of focus and skillset and so on, they keep you fresh without having to take months and times away out of the country.”
No doubt, in the Slaughtneil dressing room, Joe Brolly’s divisive comment that Shane McGuigan wouldn’t make the Dublin forward line would have been discussed. Rogers does not agree with him.
“It was harsh stuff,” says the PwC player of the month for July.
“Awk look, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion but I would hold Shane in very high esteem.
“I think he would get in any team in Ireland but again I’m playing with him all the time, and I know what he’s capable of all the time and sometimes that’s not reflected on game-day because of the team’s style of play.”
Brolly said on the Independent’s Breaking Ball podcast that, because ‘he can’t run’ and because ‘he’s one-footed,’ McGuigan wouldn’t make it.
“He could play totally different if he was on a Dublin squad and be a bit more…he gets me two or three people marking him when he’s playing for Derry,” says Rogers.
“Would that be the case if he was playing for Dublin with a big spread of high calibre players?
“It would be so different! Awk, everyone has their own visions of how people play and how they could play but you don’t get a top scorer in the championship not being good enough for any team.”
As one of the great dual players from one of the great dual clubs, Rogers is in a good place to talk about hurling and football and how they compare as games.
The 29-year-old says they differ in the manner that hurling can be more intense to football’s more controlled nature.
“I get the premise that in football you need more of your 15 being that classic ultimate athlete type of thing, when you’re constantly up and down the pitch.
“Distance is always high, but the tempo is a lot more controlled.
“What I would find in hurling that it’s more bouts of intensity, and a lot more all or nothing because of the speed the ball moves. So you’re reacting a lot sharper in hurling. At club level, distances covered are relatively similar, but the physicality of being in rucks is a lot more.
“Across the board, you’d cover more ground in football, it’s just the rucks and stuff that are more physical in hurling and that’s how it differs.
“They’re so similar and so different in many ways. You’d do the same conditioning for both but how they apply is ever so slightly different. The reactiveness is the bigger change.”
The biggest change for Rogers the footballer this year was that, having been full back previously, he was moved out to midfield for Derry.
And it worked to great effect.
“It’s welcome when you’re not having to get back and mark someone after getting up the field. It takes the weight off from that side. I never thought I’d be doing a bit of scoring out there, thought it would be more tagging and a defensive role but it’s funny how it changes when you get into those positions.
“You have to learn to be a bit more polished when it came to the skills of shooting and things like that! But it’s something I did enjoy, the change, the challenge. You’re on the ball a lot more. I could have went games where I didn’t kick a ball at all at full back and it could have been a good day at the office still!”
Brendan Rogers is the PwC player of the month for July.
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