Laffan praises huge workrate
a free and then with a wicked goal from his second penalty of the day brought Carnew kicking and screaming back into this game at 3-7 to 0-9.
It was all Carnew now. They attacked with venom and Warren Kavanagh brought a save out of Cian Staunton as his fumbled the ball with his hurl. All Staunton could do as flick the ball over his own crossbar and we were back to a one-score game at 3-7 to 1-10 with 18 gone.
A Donohoe free left two between the sides but Glenealy are masters at steadying their ship and a class score from Jonathan O’Neill Jnr took the pressure off before his father pushed it out to four with a well-taken free after 22, 3-9 to 1-11.
Now we had a serious game on our hands. Gary Hughes who was introduced for Robert Byrne pointed a massive score for Glenealy before Donohue collected a Seanie Kinsella ball and swung ALL Garry Laffan was concerned about coming in to this game was the first half of hurling that lay before them when they took to the field against Carnew Emmets.
‘We just took it one half at a time, we said before the match that we are playing one half-hour’s hurling, not to even worry about the result or worry about what was going to happen in the second half. I asked the lads to just gas themselves out in the first half because we have seven or eight lads sitting on the line who are good enough to be on the team, we just can’t play them all unfortunately, So, I just said to the lads, burst yourselves for the first half and if you can’t walk for the second half let it be so, we’ve lads on the line who can come in and take it up,’ he said.
Going in with a significant lead at the break, Laffan knew that Carnew would come with something in the second half.
‘In fairness to them (Glenealy) they worked fierce hard. Now, a few of the ball breaks came our way and Cian made a great save from the penalty, probably the score line flattered us at half-time, but we knew that Carnew weren’t just going to go away in the second half, they have too much proud tradition for that to happen, they were never going to lie down and in true Carnew style they came back ut us and with 10 minutes to go it was back to three points and I think Warren handpassed the ball which Cian flicked it over the bar. That could have leveled the game. It’s the fine margins.
‘Luckily for us, we got on the end of a breaking ball at the other end of the field and we got a goal and that took the pressure off us a little bit at the stage and we saw it out. But up to that point Carnew looked very much like victors with 10 minutes to go unless we pulled something out of the bag,’ he said.
Curtailing Enda Donohue’s infleunce on the game was key to keeping Carnew’s score down and Emmet Byrne’s performance in the first half was noteworthy to say the least.
‘Look, at the end of the day Enda has been the top scorer in the championship and he’s the form player and we would have spoken a good bit about it during the week that if he was in the different lines who was going to pick him up. He has a bit of a height advantage on Emmet but to be honest I wouldn’t like to be marking Emmet. He’s a little tiger and he works fierce hard. When I arrived up first, he was an awful man for giving away frees, we’ve knocked that out of him. We took him off a few times because of it. I think eventually, it’s like anything, If you drill something into a player often enough they can change if they are receptive.
On a number of occasions Cian Staunton and his hard-working full-back line thwarted Carnew goal chances. Garry Laffan said that Cian earned his chance having got a start in the league this year.
‘I was delighted for him (Cian), and a mention for Keith (Snell) last year. Keith came in last year and did a fine job for us.
‘Cian was in the background always, he had been on the county under-21 team and he was hanging around ready and we gave him a chance at the start of the year and he played the league matches and I sort of have a policy that if you have the jersey you hang on to it to a certain extent because we have so many players deserving of the jersey I can’t keep chopping and changing so if you make the first 15 that’s brilliant but for me it’s about the 26 or 27 lads during the year, said the Glenealy boss.