Winger Curryback for Stute

The Brandywell man, who died suddenly on Sunday, had a great will to win and Deery is looking for his squad to have the same desire in their promotion charge, which continues at Dergview this Saturday (KO 3pm).

“A lot of the players know Ryan well, we are all local and we all live within four or five miles and we know what this city is like, it’s a real football family city,” he said.

“Ryan had a wide group of friends both in and outside of football and I know some of my players are absoutely devastated with his death.

“We have to try and focus at doing better for ourselves and try to get promoted, but yes sport and football is put into perspective during this time.

“Although we are passionate about the game, we have to realise that there’s a lot more going on in the world. We want to play with passion and fire like Ryan did but sadly you just don’t know what’s around the corner.”

Only a few weeks ago, the Waterside men were fortunate to see off Richard Clarke’s side and because of that Deery is expecting another close encounter.

“They will be really highly moviated and we have to be ready to match them,” he added.

“We didn’t manage the game right during a 25 minute spell against Ballyclare so the message this week has been that we need to manage the game better.

“We can’t get hung up on trying to be pleasing in the eye all the time, at times you have to muscle up to sides and meet them head on, if we do that then in certain parts of the game we’ll get the opportunity to go and play our football, create chances and hopefully then we’ll take them.

“I felt we took our chances quite well the last day and we have to have the same hungry this week going into this game, it could be defining moment for us. We have only lost one game since going into the split and we are determined to keep it that way.”

Every game against Dergview has been tough and Deery is expecting a similar hard test this weekend.

“We are under no illusions it’s going to be another tough game, in a strange way, I’m looking forward to the challenge going up there,” he said.

“We’ll be desperately hungry to try and turn us over to get their promotion chase back on track, but we also have to show the fighting commitments which we have shown over the last few weeks and if we keep doing that we’ll be OK.”

Winger Stephen Curry is back in the Stute squad, while his brother Dean is also on the road to recovery.

“In the previous two games at Dergview, Stevie did really well in them and because he missed last week’s game we want him back ready to go again,” said Deery.

“Dean is in the running for a recall but we’ll see how he goes.

“We’ll see how training goes on Thursday night and then we’ll start thinking which team we’ll pick after that last session tomorrow night. Hopefully I pick the right team, which I feel will get us the win at Dergview.”