‘You can train all you like, but it’s about matches’

IT was flagged before last weekend and after the two sides with the longest waits were both defeated it would be remiss of us not to bring it up again now.

Ballyduff had a six week wait for a game. In that time Kilmoyley had played a quarter-final with Crotta O’Neills. That had to have been a huge advantage to Kilmoyley and a disadvantage to the reigning champions.

“We’d one match. We couldn’t get matches,” Ballyduff boss Ger Manly lamented.

“We’d lads working and lads on holidays. I know we’d a good few togged out, but then they were playing football as well. We just didn’t get the games and you could see it today we were a bit rusty.

“Sometimes we looked very good and at other times then we were cringing going ‘Jesus our touch isn’t there’. You can train all you like, but it’s about matches. It’s a big break, but look that’s the luck of the draw.

“Would we have been better off being beaten by Crotta? Possibly, but then we could have been beaten again in the quarter-final.”

That’s the sort of pragmatism we’ve come to expect from the Cork native. He readily admits that putting two championships back-to-back is a difficult task for any side, no matter the circumstances. “It is,” he agreed. “Kilmoyley beat us two years ago. We beat them last year and they beat us this year. They’ve a good hunger. It’ll be an interesting final between them Lixnaw, I hear Shane Conway did wreck in the first game. So it’s can they handle him? They probably can, they’re around a lot time, it’s just for us it’s disappointing because we didn’t play to our potential.

“We didn’t hurl really. Every break went against us. We normally would have three of four goal chances got, we’d six or seven goal chances, didn’t take them and look we were on top a lot, but in fairness to Kilmoyley they stuck at it and they could have finished it off there near the end. I thought they got a couple of soft frees there at the end, but that’s the way it goes.

“Some days you get the breaks, some days you don’t, today we didn’t. You need a bit of luck. Kilmoyley to give them credit had a great hunger, they worked hard, I think they out-worked us really and that’s disappointment for me as a coach.

“We’d a lot of wides, bad wides, chances that we’d normally snap up. We’ve two of the best forwards in Kerry and played well now in all fairness, but probably should have got more scores for us and that’s important as well.”