His nine-point haul ensured he won a fourth successive Man-of-the-Match award, but Shane McGuigan would rather Derry had two points instead of one after being denied by Monaghan in Celtic Park on Saturday night.
The hosts were three down in the last 10 minutes, but looked like they had done enough to see off the challenge of the Farney when McGuigan converted a stunning long-range free moments after Ethan Doherty levelled the game.
However, with five minutes of stoppage-time to be played, Monaghan were able to engineer one final shot with the impressive Karl O’Connell keeping his cool to level the game at 0-14 each just seconds before the full-time whistle.
Read more: Derry 0-14 Monaghan 0-14 score recap and result from the All-Ireland Championship tie
Speaking to GAAGO after the game, McGuigan reflected: “I’d enjoy it if we were sitting with two points to be honest. I’m in good enough form, but the team always comes first.
“Believe me, I’d rather be sitting with one point to my name if we had two points on the table.
“We still have an opportunity to come top of this group. We know we need two massive performances in the next two games, but it is still in our hands.”
He added: “We’ve a lot of things to work on. We have to try and take the positives out of it. Three points down with 10 minutes to go, we really dug in and that’s in the last two games.
“That shows the grit and determination of these boys. But, we know a performance like that for the 60 minutes before it won’t do.
“We’re leaving too much for ourselves so we’ll recover, but we’ve a lot to work on if we want to get past Donegal in the next game.”
When pressed on what was said by the new Derry boss Ciaran Meenagh at half-time when Derry were one point behind, McGuigan stressed that the Ulster champions sat too deep and their usual workrate was lacking in the first half.
“I think we were sitting far too deep in the first half. We were inviting Monaghan on to us and they were popping scores from the 40 and 45-yard line,” added the Slaughtneil clubman.
“We were inviting the pressure on us. We said we have to step out and be that bit more aggressive, we were too passive in our defence. Our forward workrate just wasn’t there in the first half.
“It was just down to attitude. We turned it around a bit in the second half.”
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