‘Tigerish defending was the key to impressive victory’

about 12 minutes left and I said it wasn’t time to panic yet.

‘We made substitutions -a lot of the lads were tired after a long season. Pitches are changing now and a lot of lads were cramping and stiffing up, so we made changes and that gave us the intensity to get back into the game. And that is what we talked about all year, having a panel to give us that intensity.

‘I didn’t think that any of our lads played particularly poorly in the first half. The changes we made were to have a cut at winning it, rather than reaction changes. We were proactive throwing a few lads on to see if it could get us over the line and it did.’

In particular,ar, he singled out the defence for theireir sterling display.y.

‘They aree real tigerish, tenacious defenders, they try to get a hand in first,t, they try to winin the ball first. We try to coach themem to stay on their feetet and they tackle around the midriffmidriff, so they are trying to get a hand in and fight for the break and they did that well. ‘They caused us a bit of trouble with the crossfield fieldcrossfield ball in the firsfirst half. We knknew that, we knknew that the twtwo Scanlons wowould be linking inglinking up and we were trying to guard against that. ‘In the second half they made chchanges, they brought big men in around the half forward line. I felt in the first half their half forwards were winning a lot of breaking ball. In the second half they didn’t do that, and I thought that gave us a better chance to mark them side to side and in front rather than they running at us.

‘Everything was pointing to Round Towers being a big, solid team and no names jumped out at us, so we got the impression that they were going to be solid rather than spectacular and that was what they were.

‘It was a difficult game for Graham Reilly. He has to play a different role for us and he understands that and I think he does that great. At this level he knows what to expect because other teams are putting two and three men on him and every team are targeting to stop him.

‘But we are more than Graham, and Graham knows that.’

Nally said he hoped Cille’s Division 1 League promotion/ relegation play-off with Blackhall, scheduled for this Friday, would be postponed to give his team more time to recover and prepare for the Leinster final, and that wish has been granted after the league clash was put back to Friday December 2nd.