Elmes thrilled as players deliver on big stage
TOM ELMES was a contented man after his side out-manoeuvred Peamount to take the SO Hotels Women’s FAI Senior Cup in the Aviva Stadium on Sunday.
The Wexford boss looked drained but relieved after a dramatic 90 minutes of football.
‘Delighted,’ he said about his initial reaction to the win.
‘It’s fantastic to come into the stadium here, your national stadium, and have an opportunity to compete in the final, so to get the win that we wanted was an even better feeling so we are absolutely delighted with it.’
Having tweaked his line-up, the Wexford boss was equally happy with how things went.
‘We had a gameplan, we changed up our shape a little bit, we knew that it was important that we went in and played our game and not get dragged into the way they wanted to play.
‘And we knew if we could do that we had a good chance of being successful on the day and I think the players did, they implemented it really, really well today so I’m delighted with that as well.’
A key change to the gameplan was in defence where the back four played together in those positions for the first time ever and, despite the goals conceded, did a fantastic job of keeping the Peamount threat in front of them.
Alluding to the likes of Lauren Dwyer playing different sports and Orlaith Conlon’s Champions League injury, Elmes talked about his defensive problems a little.
‘It’s been difficult all year with (players) injured and being unavailable.
‘Training-wise, if players aren’t training you can’t always play them so they have to want to play first of all. Once players had settled in and put themselves in a position to be selected, it kind of made the job a little bit easier.’
He admitted that he had a good feeling about second striker Lauren Kelly getting on the scoresheet and was proved right.
‘I said to her during the warm-up, I said she was going to score today, I just have a feeling you’re going to get one.
‘Playing two up top, we knew that Rianna (Jarrett) was going to take a lot of attention, they would have planned to put their two centre-halves on her and we knew that was going to free-up that second striker, and you could see that with the first goal, the space she had.
‘Even with the second goal, Rianna didn’t get on the scoresheet today but the work that she does is immense and I think she dragged their defence all over the place and freed up space for Lauren to get a bit more joy.’
On the year as a whole, Elmes admitted to frustrations, saying: ‘It has been a frustrating year, new players coming in, the attitude of the two girls Lynn (Craven) and Lauren (Kelly) has been excellent, other players joined us at the
start of the year and probably weren’t ready for that level of commitment.
‘There is a level of commitment involved and people can’t show us that or bring that to the table, they are not going to last too long at the club, that’s fine, that’s completely up to them. Other players left the club, wanted more game time, and I respect and appreciate that.
‘But we’ve got to focus on what we’ve got here, so it probably just took us a little bit longer to get the team gelled than we would have liked.
‘We probably seemed to click a bit better once we were out of the Champions League, there was some fantastic performances.
‘On the back of the Champions League our performances probably didn’t get the results they deserved at times but we knew, we were watching games back, we knew the team was playing really well, it was coming together.
‘It’s been a tough year but I think we have an excellent squad at the minute,’ Elmes concluded.