Johnny Clerkin’s team progress from the group in second spot despite suffering first loss of the term
JOHNNY Clerkin could sense disappointment in his Louth players having failed to qualify automatically for the Leinster MFC semi-final last weekend but the team manager believes the fortnight’s break will help his side as they prepare for a knockout clash with the winner of Offaly’s upcoming joust with Wicklow.
Their first defeat of the campaign in Kildare on Saturday meant the Reds finished second in the group, teeing up a home quarter-final with the victor of the preliminary tussle involving the Faithful, who finished third in Group 1, and Wicklow, who topped the three-team pool.
Should Louth progress, they would most likely meet Longford in the last four so there remains plenty of incentive for the Wee county ahead of their May 1 outing.
“It’s far from doom and gloom,” Clerkin said.
“We’re disappointed not to be in a semi-final but we’re happy with where we’re at all the same. We will go back and work on the basics but there is not much that we need to change. We will be ready for either Offaly or Wicklow at home and it’s nice to have that break leading into it.
“This was our first defeat and it will hurt for a few days because the lads have been at it hard and getting a period of time to refresh, reassess and tidy up things will be appreciated. It’s not that we can’t fix what went wrong against Kildare.
“Tom (Maguire) going off was a big blow and while not trying to put an emphasis on one particular person, when you can get primary possession in that middle sector with Micheál O’Shaughnessy and Tom, it’s a great building block for us.
“We had to slightly adjust when we lost Tom
and we were scrapping to re-adjust a bit but some days you’re just the second best team. When you start chasing games and forcing things, you can leave yourself a bit open and exposed, and we didn’t hit that purple patch in the second half that we expected to.”
This was a fairly unfancied Louth team before the campaign got underway but they turned in two fine performances to see off Westmeath and Meath in successive fixtures before the round three reverse in Hawkfield.
“We’re disappointed,” Clerkin added. “I felt we did really well in the first half and got ourselves into a relatively good position at six points to three down by half-time. They kicked a few bad wides and we scored three from six shots so we were relatively happy.
“We started the second half pretty okay and got one or two chances but I suppose Tom going off had a big influence on the game and we then started making simple mistakes which helped Kildare to turn the screw a wee bit.
“But three weeks ago we set out to see where we were at and we’d have taken your hand off to finish second. We came down here with nothing to lose, we had a shot to go to a semi-final and we’re bitterly disappointed that we’re in a quarter-final, but three or four weeks ago, we’d have taken hand and all to be where we are now.
“There was no pressure coming down, even if we did come down to win. The dynamics are different when you’re away, though, because these fellas have been used to playing at home on a Wednesday evening whereas we were coming away on a Saturday morning, putting them on a bus and the whole home versus away thing was pretty evident.
“If you were playing at home, would we have had that bit of a kick when we were looking for it? In fairness, there was a great Louth support and they encouraged the team through the tough moments in the second half. But we’ve no complaints and sometimes there are no reasons for a defeat other than you were the second best on the day.
“The big thing is to learn from it, try and improve from it and to address any issues for the quarter-final, and we’ll be ready for that.”
On a side note, there was a Louth link to the Kildare team on Saturday afternoon. Lilies defender Liam McDonald, who plays his club football with Maynooth, is the nephew of Mattock Rangers’ 2002 Joe Ward Cup-winning captain Donal Geraghty and his mother hails from Collon.