A DOSE OF THE BLUES
COLIN Kelly insists Louth will have to brush up on their target practice as they head for Portlaoise on Saturday night (7.00) on the back of a heavy O’Byrne Cup final defeat to Dublin.
The Reds’ chief was particularly annoyed with a poor return from a period of the game in which he felt his team were utterly dominant, and he conceded it has been recurring theme throughout the pre-season competition.
‘We were well in the game at half-time alright, but we should have been out the gate,’ he said.
‘At half-time if we had been 2-12 to 0-5 ahead it wouldn’t have flattered us really.
‘The difference was when they got their 10 minutes either side of half-time they shut out the game.
‘Their skill-set in that third quarter was pretty good and the difference in the two teams was that our period of domination yielded 10 wides, a few into the ‘keeper’s hands and two oneon-one goal chances missed. In their period of dominance they kicked 1-7 and closed out the game.
‘It’s something we have to fix reasonably quickly.’
Some degree of improvement will be needed by Saturday evening when Louth kick off their Allianz League campaign in O’Moore Park, but Kelly revealed that training sessions have been at a premium due to a congested January schedule.
‘Five competitive games is the upside, but the downside is it limits your training time. Hence we’re not getting enough work done on what we want to do going forward.
‘We’re missing so many scores it’s incredible so hopefully we can turn that end of things around between now and Saturday night.
‘That’s where games are decided, we’re just not scoring enough from our periods of dominance. For 35 minutes some of our play was exceptional and our return for that was five points which isn’t good enough at this level. That’s what we have to work on. There are no excuses, it was all in our own hands.
‘We’re disappointed. It was a decent O’Byrne Cup campaign. I knew we wouldn’t dominate the match for 70 minutes against this quality of a side, so I knew we’d be under the cosh after only scoring five points from our period of domination.
‘We know what we have to work on, there’s no hiding behind it and there’s point saying we’re in a good place because it has to change and it has to change quickly, but if we get it right we will be in a good place.’
And there won’t be much time to work on anything this week with a Saturday night throw-in, Kelly revealed.
‘Tomorrow night we’ll get them into the pool and the gym for a recovery session and we’ll train Wednesday night, and the match is Saturday. We don’t have a three-week period to fix what’s going wrong. It’s a bad time of year for that.
‘Look it would have been great to win silverware in front of your own crowd because it’s not that often you get to do that and it would have been a great lift for the players and their families and for the supporters too. I keep coming back to it because I know the skill-set in the dressing room and that’s why it’s so disappointing to have a period of dominace like that and only come away from it with five points,’ he added.
That’s where games are decided, we’re just not scoring enough from our periods of dominance. For 35 minutes some of our play was exceptional and our return for that was five points which isn’t good enough at this level.