Evans happy with effort

‘Physically, Laois are much further down the road’

WICKLOW Senior football manager John Evans will use this week to lift the spirits of his charges ahead of the clash with Carlow this Saturday evening in Netwatch Cullen Park.

Providing the ‘Beast from the East’ doesn’t destroy the weekend’s fixture list, Saturday’s game provides a very important chance to put some much-needed positivity back into the Wicklow camp following last Sunday’s disappointing defeat to John Sugrue’s Laois.

John Evans said that the O’Moore County men are much further down the road in terms of physical development.

“They were physically very, very strong and they’re much, much further down the road in their physical development than we are,” said the Wicklow boss.

“That’s the first thing you’d say. We actually took the ball off them as much as they took off us. There was an inordinate amount (of turnovers) on both sides. That was our work rate. Physically, I just thought they were able to brush us aside, even though we were trying to make the tackles, they just brushed us aside and they kicked some fine scores.

“We were doing all right for 17 minutes and then they hit us for 1-02 and I thought it took the hard workand the wind out of our sails. But at the same time, we got to halftime and we were nine points down I think, and we came out and there was a couple of decisions that went against us there, they really went against us. They got a couple of frees there and, look, we had to work very, very hard. We weren’t scoring from play, that was another thing.

“We were being fouled and we took our frees, Mark Jackson nailed a few of them for us, which sort of gave us a bit of hope, but we drew the second half and, on the positive side, I would admire the players for staying going under the circumstances. They stayed working, they stayed at it. Their hearts are in the right place, their minds are in the rigth place, but you come up against the best team in it (Division 4), that’s the trench we have to dig ourselves out of. These two teams (Laois and Carlow), they are beating everybody else pretty well. I was delighted with the way they stayed at it.

“We did very, very good examples of that (the tactic of retreating and breaking at a pace) in the first half and just the final kick didn’t come off. Having said that, they are a young team learning, they’re learning a lot. There’s a lot of young lads going in there in comparison with the size of the opposition and you’d have to say it was definitely men against boys in some respects,” he added.

All going well, Wicklow will take to the field against Carlow for a 7pm start in Netwatch Cullen Park.