O’Byrne success a target for Kelly as Louth start with a victory

into those positions and he’s up there with anyone in the game in terms of his athleticism and ability to get up the pitch.

‘The finishing we can work on; what we didn’t want to do was come here today and be behind on fitness or application and I thought the lads were excellent from the minute we got on the bus this morning. Their application since we got back together has been great.

‘But you’re never happy. We possibly didn’t identify that Westmeath were pushing up on us and when we put Ross [Nally] and Ronan [Carroll] in up top we probably needed to get ball in quicker to them. When fatigue sets in the mind doesn’t operate as it should and we also gave away balls that we wouldn’t like to be giving away. So that’s an area of our game we have to sit down and look at.

‘All our problems today related to skillset and that’s something we haven’t really worked on. We’ve worked on killing the ball in the tackle and making sure we don’t get broken down with one-twos, and all that stuff seemed to work today. What didn’t work was fellas taking the wrong option in the final third and poor execution, but we have three or four weeks to work on that.’

In terms of personnel, Louth were a long way from full strength, but those who were on duty gave Kelly food for thought and he appears to be heading for a selection headache come the National League.

‘You have Adrian Reid who picked up a hand injury yesterday and needed five or six stitches and we hoped to get game time into him today. You have Ryan Burns with the college and Eoin O’Connor is out with a foot injury. There are lots of lads out for one reason or another, but it’s not about who’s not playing it’s about who is playing and we were comfortable with the fifteen that we put out there and we were comfortable with the lads that came in.

‘It’s early days and there’s a lot of mistakes being made, but the big thing for us was that we shut them down better than we have done in the past. Everything was good in two thirds of the pitch today and the final third is not s omewhere we have been found wanting over the last few years and it’s something we can put right in the next couple of weeks.’

With two more group games to come on Wednesday and Sunday against Maynooth and Carlow, Kelly insisted that progressing in the O’Byrne Cup is a priority and dimissed the notion that the O’Byrne Cup isn’t important.

‘It’s not early days and it’s not just the O’Byrne Cup - it’s a game you want to win, plain and simple. No-one wants to go home on a bus after being beaten. Losing challenge matches is bad enough without losing competitive matches. Anytime you get a chance to wear a Louth jersey is special whether it’s the O’Byrne Cup in Mullingar or the Championship in Croke Park. Everything we do is about treating the jersey with the respect it deserves,’ he added.