Same-day journey took its toll

REACTION

WICKLOW manager Jonathan ‘Bosco’ O’Neill views the day trip to London as a big factor in his side suffering a heavy defeat at the hands of London in the second round of the Allianz National Hurling League Division 2B on a score of 3-30 to 1-21.

“We started off very slow, we were up early (the team’s flight to London was at 7.40am, with the match being at 1pm in Ruislip). When you are up that early you can be a bit sluggish.

“They got a bit of a run on us, but we got back into the game, they were leading 1-17 to 0-7 while we were against the wind (in the first half), so things weren’t looking too bad. In the second half they opened up a bit of a gap, but we managed to keep with them for 25 minutes, and just in the last 10 minutes they put on a few extra scores, and it was a bit of a struggle.”

Last week Wicklow only managed to score 13 points at home against Donegal but this time round they managed to get 1-8 more showing that the attacking threat has improved after the opening round.

“We scored 1-21, most times you are saying to inter-county teams I hope we score around 2-17.

“We got about 1-3 without reply in the second half but they came back at us, they are more experienced, they are bigger and stronger lads at the moment, their hurling played out and you could see they seemed to find the scores easier than us, but the lads kept plugging away and much like last week they worked their socks off and that’s what we ask of them to keep turning up and working hard,” he said.

Pádraig Doran, Tommy Collins and Cian

Lohan made their return to the team and there are more to come back in the future from injury, this could be a factor for the later rounds of the league and for the championship, but caution may have to be taken.

“We are hoping to have Ronan (McMahon) and Seanie (Germaine) back soon, and even today we thought we wouldn’t get 70 minutes out of Doran and Tommy, but we shouted in at them to take them off.

“I didn’t want to dog them coming back from their injuries, but they wanted to stay on which shows the determination that they have.

“When you’re getting beaten sometimes players want to come off, but they didn’t.”

Wicklow’s next match is at home on February 25 against Roscommon who this week suffered a nine-point defeat away to Tyrone.

In the other game last weeekend, Derry defeated Donegal by 2-20 to 0-19 in Letterkenny.