McEneaney disappointed not to finish campaign on a high

WINNING promotion with a game to spare yielded a very welcome bonus for Colin Kelly’s so-called fringe players on Sunday.

Breaking into a team that won four out of five games en-route to topping the table will be no easy task, but with the pressure off, Sunday’s clash with Sligo offered one last chance to stake a claim for a jersey in Saturday evening’s final against Tipperary.

Making the 26-man squad, let alone the staring 15, will be an achievement given the competition for places this season and despite playing the first two games of the campaign, Jim McEneaney found himself in that situation on Sunday.

A badly-timed ankle sprain picked up against Longford, ruled the Geraldines man out of the rest of the promotion push, but he returned on Sunday to kick five points.

But he was disappointed not to win a game Louth led at half-time and ruled out the possibility that Louth lacked focus after securing promotion.

‘It definitely wasn’t the way we wanted to finish. We talked about being as strong today as we were in the other games. It may have been different guys in but we wanted to continue what we had been doing and what we work on in training.

‘There were a lot of new faces in and a couple who have played a lot over the last couple of weeks, so lads were always going to be at full tilt to try and put their hand up for next week.

‘Maybe if it was the same team as last week, it might have been harder for those lads to focus because obviously they are going to be preparing for next week and have one eye on that. But the lads who took the field today were clued in and you can see that from the first-half display. We worked hard and the GPS stats were good, so lads were doing their bit to put their hand up and I don’t think there was any loss of focus.’

However, in the closing stages Sligo seized the initiative and McEneaney admitted that a lack of match sharpness might have been a factor.

‘It’s hard to know what happened, maybe we lost our shape a bit. Maybe match fitness was an issue because lads haven’t been playing week-in/week-out. But at the end of the day it wasn’t good enough in the last 20 minutes.

With news filtering through from Armagh that Tipp had secured victory, McEneaney wasn’t too fussed who Louth play in the final.

‘It if was going to be Armagh we’d be looking at them and thinking about getting some revenge and it’s going to be the same for Tipp against us. But it doesn’t really matter who you’re playing. It’s a national final in Croke Park and we’ll be looking to do the same as last year,’ he added.