Managing expectations

game that’s why we didn’t start him today. UCC are out this week so there’s a lot of football being played.

It’s bad enough that we’ve to play three games in thirteen days but throwing in Sigerson Cup games as well it’s a hugely demanding period. And you take the physicality of the game there today and the physicallity of the game last week against Tyrone and it’s hugely demanding. So I wouldn’t get hugely worked up about momentum, I’d be getting more worked up about trying to get bodies on the field at this stage.

“The key for me has been to try and create some bit of a structure, some semblance of a team and try to get rolling that way. Bit by bit we’re getting a few back but no sooner do you get one or two back but you lose or two again.”

Reflecting on the game in Cavan Keane was unimpressed with his team’s performance in the first half but was pleased to see a positive change after the interval.

“The first half I thought our workrate was very poor. We managed at half time rectify that. We were down at half time eleven (points) to seven, lost the first half by four points, but we turned it around in the second half to win it by nine (points) to two. Now that wind was a factor, it was definitely a factor although you mightn’t have noticed it as much here (in the tunnel area). So Cavan in the first half and us in the second did have an advantage with that wind.

“I don’t think we nec- essarily set up (in the first half) to be defensive but that’s just the way it happened, we were under a bit of pressure and we just had to tidy it up and get it sorted at half time.

“(Half time substitutes) Dara Moynihan worked hard, Tommy (Walsh) worked hard, but there was a change of attitude, a change of mind-set and fellas started working that weren’t working before that,” he said, while acknowledging that Kerry’s best period was when they went down to 14 players with Tom O’Sullivan in the sin-bin.

“I’m not sure where we are at with conditioning, if that was a reason for it. Maybe we were just tidy on the ball in that period and maybe we had a bit of momentum in the game at that stage. Probably at that moment in time we had a bit of momentum, even though we were still a point down, twelve to eleven at that stage.”

NFL Division 1

Mayo

Kerry Dublin Monaghan Roscommon Galway Cavan

Ty rone PWDL Diff Pts 2 2 0 0 10 4

2 2 0 0 7 4

2 101 8 2 1

2 1 0 1 12 2 1 0 1 -9 2

2 0 0 2 -5 0

2 0 0 2 -13 0 Saturday, February 9 Kerry v Dublin, 7pm Mayo v Cavan, 7pm Sunday, February 10 Roscommon v Tyrone, 2pm Monaghan v Galway, 2pm