Derry midfielder Brendan Rogers: 'We said at the start, we wanted to win every competition we entered'

This weekend five years ago, Brendan Rogers started at full-back as Derry saw off Leitrim in the Division 4 final.

If that bottom-tier decider was a celebratory occasion for Leitrim - their first runout in HQ since the famous All-Ireland semi-final a quarter of a century earlier - it was considered a grim business for Derry, ideally to be completed briskly and best forgotten.

That they were down there at all was deemed a shocking turn of events. Having contested the Division 1 final in 2014, where they were blown out of it after half-time, they had slipped down three tiers in the space of four years.

As we now know, they have returned to the summit just as quickly. Exactly 10 years after the 2014 league final, they are back again - facing the same opposition. A fitting bookend to a decade where they scaled sickening lows and thrilling highs. As good a moment as any to take stock.

"It was probably unforeseeable that you would go up so quickly in all the divisions," Rogers told RTÉ Sport this week, ahead of their meeting with Dublin.

"Once we got promoted from Division 4, we had a change of management in Rory Gallagher. He quickly made it very clear, the ambitions (he had) and where he saw this team going.

"He said we would win Ulster championships, he said we would be competing for All-Irelands and there'd be players winning All-Stars and (individual) accolades and things like that.

"Probably initially, we were all, like, 'you're mad!'

"As time went on, you started believing in the methods that were being laid out for us. You could start seeing the team get better. Our performances were improving and were more consistent in nature.

"You start stringing together results that we'd never had before. The belief comes quickly. The