McKeever hopes experience will count

WAYNE McKeever hopes the experience of Saturday’s defeat to a ‘strong and physical’ Fingallians outfit will stand to his charges in the senior grade next season.

The Joe’s went toe-to-toe with the Dublin champions for 45 minutes, but after opening a three-point lead at the end of the third quarter, they failed to kick on. ‘IT wasn’t to be,’ McKeever mused afterwards. ‘They’re a very strong and physical and after seeing them last week we knew we would be up against it. But I thought we matched them for long parts of the game and really lady luck just ran out on us in the end.

‘We pushed on early in the second half. We got a goal and point straight after, but their penalty was really the turning poin and when they got on top they kicked a few more scores and it was very hard to get the momentum back.’

In the early stages it was the Joe’s who set the tempo and McKeever revealed that was the plan.

‘Any team with Paul Flynn is going to be strong and I think they have a couple of Dublin minors there too, so we wanted to keep the intensity up from the start and bring the game to them. It worked well for us and we probably could have had a goal on our first attack.

‘I thought we might kick on after we got the goal early in the second half. We had agood patch before half-time and I think Fingallians heads were kind of down at that stage and we really should have kicked on. But a couple of things went against us, instead of winning the next ball after the goal they won it - little things like that make all the difference.’

The former O’Connell’s player conceded that his team were overrun in the final quarter.

‘At the end it looked like they had 17 men on the pitch and the lads they brought on really made a difference. The McLoughlin lad kicked a few crucial points.’

But overall it has been a successful season for the Joe’s and McKeever is looking forward to 2017, particularly if he can get the injured players he has yet to even coach back in the fold.

‘I’m proud of every single player here. At the start of the year people were talking about relegation we were missing that many bodies, but we dug deep and tried to get the best out of the lads. We won the championship and missed out narrowly in the league and got to the Leinster quarter-finals, so you can’t ask for any more than that.

‘We will need everyone back next year and I’ve told them that. It’s a young squad and they’re all very hungry and hopefully days like these will stand to them next year.

‘We need to get up to senior league football, but it’s such a hard division to get out of. There were three teams who only suffered a draw and defeat each last year, 19 points didn’t get you up. It’s going to be tough against next year with the likes of O’Connell’s coming down, but that’s the challenge and we’re looking forward to it.’