Byrne feels Reds left too much of a mountain to climb
‘YOU can’t play for thirty minutes and expect to win football matches,’ Louth substitute Declan Byrne stressed after the crushing loss to Offaly on Sunday.
Louth’s best spell was ignited by Byrne’s introduction. Dominating the majority of the second half, the Reds whittled the deficit down to one point having been twelve down after the restart, but the Mochta’s man felt the game swung on a key decision by the referee.
‘I think we probably squeezed the ball, squeezed their kick outs and they started to panic so they did,’ Byrne explained
‘Ultimately it probably came to a few wee breaks of the ball here and there. I felt when we got to that point I thought their goalkeeper came out and over carried the ball to tell you the truth. The game seemed to turn on that. They went up the field and got a score.’
From the sideline, Byrne was watching his side suffer at the hands of the elements and he believes that combined with some unforced errors Louth gave themselves a mountain they simply weren’t be able to scale.
‘I thought the conditions were even worse in the first half seemed to be blowing an absolute hooley. Byrne said.
‘We couldn’t get up the field and any mistake we seemed to make we were punished for
Conceded two sloppy goals but there was always going to be a story of two halves, we just left ourselves with too much to do and we couldn’t claw them back
it. Conceded two sloppy goals but there was always going to be a story of two halves, we just left ourselves with too much to do and we couldn’t claw them back.’
Despite the margin, Byrne said his teammates didn’t lack belief coming out in the second half.
‘We definitely thought that if we got a quick start to the second half we could work our way back in it. I think they got the opening two in the second half, but we started squeezing the ball, our work rate went up and in fairness the crowd started getting into it as well.’
Byrne himself was the main reason for the crowds engagement. Whipping over four scores and setting up Grimes to make it a one point game.
‘That’s what you are there to do,’ he stressed.
‘I was determined to make an impact because I played against Longford and I wasn’t good enough. Simple as. But the boys put in a huge effort in the second half. Ultimately we’ve no points at the end of the day and it’s extremely frustrating because we feel like we could easily be sitting on two or three points at this stage considering some of the 25/30 minute performances.’
Although Louth are propping up the Division 3 table, Byrne still believes in the quality of his teammates to pick up points if they can patch it all together.
‘You can see how tight the games are,’ he maintained. ‘We were terrible in Longford and we lost by three points we were good in parts against Tipperary and felt like we came out the wrong side of it and today again we only played for 25 minutes.
‘I keep harping back to it, if you don’t play well for 70 minutes you have no right to win games. It is a tight division but we’ll be confident if we perform for 70 minutes we can beat anybody.
‘We have a young group there, a steep learning curve, we’ll be going to Derry next and we’ll hopefully get the morale back up during the week and go looking for two points.