Although conditions were tough, we can’t us this as an excuse
Heading up the M1 on Sunday morning with the wipers barely keeping up with the rain, I had a bad feeling as days like these don’t suit Sligo.
Over the years we would never really be considered a big physical team, relying more on pace, work- rate, agility and scoring forwards to win games.
Looking out the window on Sunday morning it would have been the Antrim players the happier, seeing the driving wind and rain.
When playing a team that were considered favourites, I always preferred, in my own playing time a day like last Sunday, when you would always get a second chance if not third when marking a forward, as advantage is always with the defender.
As I said last week there are always upsets in this Division as proved over the last number of weeks.
While Sligo should have gotten something from this game they still can’t argue over the result, as Antrim managed the conditions and the game better than we did, funnelling players back quickly, making it very difficult for our forwards to find space and then breaking with pace and purpose when they turned us over.
Sligo had the majority of possession in the first half and were in the driving seat after the benefit of a well- executed goal, after firstly the Antrim full back made a mess of a simple catch, to then see the corner back slip, with Niall Murphy reading the situation well, finding the bottom corner.
Sligo were now in control and should have capitalised further when a number of elementary frees were missed by Adrian Marren, frees you would normally have put down as score even before he kicked it.
After these misses, Niall Murphy came out to take a more difficult free from the right nailing it from the ground.
At this stage it was unusual that Murphy wasn’t given, or that he didn’t take over the free taking duties in these difficult conditions.
I said last week that I expected Antrim with their abysmal defensive record from Rounds One and Two would have no option but to set up defensively and try to win a low scoring game, and this is what they did.
If I was told before a ball was thrown in that twelve points would be enough to win the game I would have seen only one winner, and it wasn’t Antrim.
While the conditions had a big say in our quality of play compared to the last outing in Thurles, we still can’t use this as an excuse for the loss.
Everything we did well in that previous game was undone in this one, where we lacked penetration from the back, bringing balls into the tackle too often, not taking personal responsibility, repeatedly going sideways and backwards with very few breaking the line, with the exception of Kevin McDonnell who did his best in this regard.
We also missed too many scoring opportunities in a game where scores were always going to be hard to come by.
Also, our supply of ball into the last third, while again compromised by conditions was not to the quality required and we struggled in this respect.
There is no doubt that Antrim had their homework well done on us and with the help of the weather it made it easier to implement their tactics, closing down the middle channel very well, forcing us down the side- lines where we made little impact.
We did make it easy for them in this regard as we did not move the ball at the pace required and slowed down the game allowing them time to regroup.
After one draw, one win, one loss and a zero scoring average you could call it a very balanced/ average start to the league campaign but it makes next Sunday’s game in Markievicz very important, as a win gets things going forward again but a loss leaves us in a position we didn’t think we would be in two weeks ago.
Laois on the other hand have lost their two home games against Louth and Tipperary but had an impressive win away versus Armagh.
Last week I made the prediction that there would be four away wins, with only Sligo letting me down.
This week I’m going to go with the same teams, Tipperary, Armagh, Louth and Sligo, although this time they are all playing at home.
As the two promotion teams are going to come from these four, it’s very important that we don’t lose any ground this weekend.