Disappointed O’Connor turns focus to the Cup

FOR a brief spell there was hope that Meath were going to do Kerry a huge favour in the other big game in Division 2A.

They led for much of the first half and a victory for the Royals would have sent Kerry to the league final regardless of how they fared against Westmeath – as long, that is, as the Kingdom didn’t lose too badly. It would have come down to score difference.

Alas Meath couldn’t maintain their challenge. By the time Allan Devine found the back of Martin Stackpoole’s net and by the time Jack Goulding picked up his second yellow card of the day – on fifty minutes – Carlow were well in control up the road in Navan.

The Kerry players on the pitch wouldn’t have been aware of any of this. As far as they were concerned their fate was in their own hands, as indeed it was. Down a man and down by five points they could have sunk without a trace.

Instead they rallied, instead they kept on battling, kept on chipping away at the Westmeath challenge. With ten minutes of regular time remaining what had been a five point gap was back down to three. Well within striking range.

“There was good spirit shown in fairness and look it just wasn’t our day, we’ll just regroup after today and get ready for the championship in six weeks time,” an understandably downbeat Fintan O’Connor said after the game.

“We’re very disappointed with today, but I suppose very disappointed with the Carlow game and maybe had a few bright spots against Kildare and Meath.”

One thing we do wonder is whether Pádraig Boyle would have been better off taking a point instead of going for goal when he had the chance from a twenty one yard free with plenty of time still on the clock.

“I suppose,” O’Connor conceded.

“But look you don’t know... if he gets the goal then you go on and come back into it and it’s a great decision, but I think in fairness Podge [Boyle] has a fairly good strike rate on those twenty one yard frees and it was probably worth going for it as well.”

Goulding’s dismissal was a huge moment in the game, but for O’Connor the pivotal moment of the game was when Pádraig Boyle’s goal on eighteen was disallowed for a square ball infraction. “I thought the goal in the first half [not given] had a massive influence on the outcome to be honest. I thought it was a massive call, but that’s the way it goes. We’ll have to dust ourselves down and get ready for the championship in a few weeks time,” he said.

“We hadn’t played as well as we’d hoped either and we were probably... and it’s hard and I’d want to look at it again, but I didn’t feel we were playing that well in the first half either.

“I thought we were making a lot of mistakes and maybe not using the ball as well as we had and we didn’t really carry the ball as well as we had done in previous games and maybe, look, Westmeath didn’t let us carry it either and fair play to them.

“Look a point down at half-time we would have been hoping that we would have got a response in the second half and then Jack getting sent off for what seemed fairly innocuous to me from where I was.”

The start of the second half saw Westmeath get well on top, especially in the middle third.

“We seemed to really struggle to win primary possession on the puck-outs and it’s something we’ll have to look at going forward,” O’Connor admitted.

Focus now turns to the McDonagh Cup. Kerry will get their campaign underway with a difficult first round clash against Carlow in Dr Cullen Park on May 5.