McEntee feels Meath have more in tank
OPENING round championship matches are liable to throw anything up. Similar to the first exam in the Leaving Cert, its difficult to know what to expect and you have to be ready for all eventualities.
There was a little bit of added pressure for Andy McEntee going in against Louth at Parnell Park last Sunday as it was his first taste of championship at this level.
‘It’s a feeling of relief, relief,’ McEntee said afterwards. ‘I’d hate to have my first championship match and lose it. It’s great though, I put my hand up for the job and these are the games you want to be playing in. Sure, it’s nice to get it across the line because you never know. You prepare as well as you can and then you go out on the pitch and it’s out of your hands. It is relief, that’s probably the over riding moment at the end of it all.’
The match was such a roller-that McEntee endured more ups and downs in one day than some managers might experience in a life time.
There was drama before the throw in when the manager’s nephew James, was unable to start after picking up an injury in the warm up.
‘James had a bit of a hip flexor injury in the lead up. We thought he was okay and he went to kick a ball in the warm up and it reacted so we had to change. You’d have to say that James Toher did himself no harm when he came on.
‘There was confusion there. I’m not really sure of the rules but I think once we clarified that James wouldn’t be coming on as a sub I think we still had 26 to play with. At the same time we would have liked to bring on Alan Douglas there at the end but we didn’t, we were afraid, we weren’t sure of the rule.
‘It was something we could have done without, we weren’t trying to pull a fast one, the guy gets injured in the warm up and then we’re told it counts as a sub and that kind of surprised me. Just as well I’m so calm and collected, I might have reacted otherwise!
There were plenty of anxious moments as well when the game got underway.
‘Every time we seemed to be in
I put my hand up for the job and these are the games you want to be playing in. Sure, it’s nice to get it across the line because you never know. You prepare as well as you can and then you go out on the pitch and it’s out of your hands. It is relief, that’s probably the over riding moment at the end of it all.
control of the game we conceded a goal. On three separate occasions we had stolen a march and looked comfortable and then we conceded a goal. So you never know, you just think what’s happening here, we haven’t conceded three goals in too many games before this.
‘That was a shock to the system but the response on each occasion was good, I think we got an instant score on every occasion so that was fairly positive.
‘I’m not too sure how many goal chances we had I would say four or five so if you threw in a couple of goals on top of what we got then you would say it was a good performance but when you don’t take your chances its not a great performance.
‘We settled into the game pretty well and we had those goal chances but didn’t take any of them. When you don’t take your chances you are always leaving yourself open to a sucker punch.’
McEntee was as confused as everyone else in the ground concerning the concession of the second Louth goal scored by Ronan Holcroft.
‘I think Paddy lost his bearings. I don’t know why he went short in the first place, we had a bit of a breeze behind us. That obviously looked to me like he thought the goals were somewhere else. It was very strange. I wasn’t quite sure. When Holcroft mis-hit the shot and I saw Paddy turning and going away I thought to myself, ‘well, it’s obviously going wide’ and then the net started to rattle.
‘I think he thought it was going wide. I think he actually thought the goals were to his left, and they were to his right.
‘He probably should have been kicking the ball long but Paddy at the same time pulled off a couple of good saves too.
‘We need to look at why he had to pull off a couple of saves as much as anything else.’
There were plenty of positives of course including the performance of captain Graham Reilly, the strong finish the team produced and the displays of some of those introduced during the course of the match.
‘Oh Graham was outstanding, that’s what he is capable of. Once he’s in the proper condition he’s a handful for anybody.
‘He took a couple of scores when maybe we could have worked a goal but he did the right thing, we needed a score at those times, needed a reaction to nearly everyone of their goals and more often than not it was him that provided them.
‘The lads who came on also played their part, Thomas Reilly was only on the pitch a couple of minutes when he got a couple of scores, same for Ruairi O Coileain, he was only on the pitch when he got a score. So it’s good for a lot of new fellas to that sort of occasion, to see how they responded and they did respond pretty well.
‘Look, we did finish strong and that doesn’t surprise me, the guys have done an awful lot of work with John Coghlan. I’ve sung his praises for long enough at this stage.
‘I have no doubt the fellas have a lot more in their tanks still, they probably could have gone on for a little bit longer if they’d had to. We looked stronger in a lot of areas in the last 10 minutes.’