Players won’t throw in the towel ‘Early’

MATHEMATICALLY, with three games left and six points to play for, Louth midfielder Conor Early still believes that relegation to Division 4 is avoidable.

‘Of course, we’re not going training four or five days a week just to show up here you know,’ the Oliver Plunketts man bristled.

‘We are playing for our county and we want to do the best we can. Unfortunately just this time, things aren’t clicking for us. We’re going to stick together, big game next week in Dowdallshill (versus Leitrim), we’ll hopefully perform then.’

Early was one of seven changes to the Louth team at the weekend against Derry and that failure to click could be seen in the opening minutes of the game when Louth went six points behind.

‘We knew what we were coming up against as well,’ a perplexed Early compounded.

‘They caught us out on transition, maybe in the first five minutes, which resulted in the goal. Unfortunately it took us one, two, or three (points) to wake up to that. But once we got motoring we were okay but again we are playing decent teams and if you give them that start it is going to hurt you.’

Despite the slow start, Louth rallied back before the half time whistle and went ahead for the first and only time in the game five minutes into the second half. Early felt that a combination of things,such was Derry’s defensive system, they couldn’t build on it and paid for it at the death.

‘The first ten minutes of the second half we knew we were in a good position,’ Early reveals.

‘When you are playing a team like that, you just have to be disciplined and concentrate on every pass you are doing. We knew ourselves we would get back into it. We trained during the week to that system, keeping the ball for long periods of time and I think we did use the ball well at certain times but when you come up against a team like that, especially up here, it is tough and in the end of the second half we were caught out really.’

Early finished: ‘We didn’t have the runners coming from deep in the last few minutes of the game and I think that let us down. And look, you can look at it as a sloppy goal, but we’ll take it on the chin as a team. We’ll stick together and go again.’