Reds on the brink after Cork defeat
OUTH boss Pete McGrath admits the Reds will have to beat Roscommon in Drogheda on Sunday week to have any hope of pulling off a great escape in Division 2 of the Allianz League.
Cork inflicted a third straight defeat on McGrath’s troops in Pairc Ui Rinn on Sunday and the Down native knows it’s win or bust against the Rossies.
‘We’ve got four matches left, two at home. We’ve got Roscommon this day fortnight, and they were beaten today. And really, in order for us to be talking sensibly and realistically about having any chance of staying in Division 2, then we simply have to beat Roscommon.
‘That will show us where we really are. It’s a home game against a team that are no world beaters, so it’s up to us to win that game and to play to a certain standard, to an acceptable standard, because for long passages against Cork our performance was not, in my view, up to scratch for a Division 2 national league team. We’ve got to put that right.’
Louth’s second-half display was probably their most consistent of the campaign, but McGrath isn’t interested in moral victories.
‘Okay, I was relatively happy with the second half, but bitterly disappointed with the first half, because for a long period in the first half we didn’t compete with Cork. They were doing very much as they wanted to do. They were running the ball with ease, and we were chasing shadows and then, the limited possession that we did get, we didn’t really maximize. At times, we were very ponderous and indecisive going forward and, without really showing any threat up front.
‘So, at half time, we were not in a good place. In the second half we did claw it back and we made a game of it up to a point, but really over the 70-odd minutes, I wouldn’t be terribly encouraged by what I saw.
‘There were some good things but there are still mistakes being made. There are still deficiencies there that need to be ironed out and sorted out pretty quickly if we’re going to get any points in our remaining four matches.’
Had Louth taken one or two of four quite decent goal chances the outcome might well have been different, but McGrath insisted you have to take your chances at this level.
‘This is our third match and we’ve yet to score a goal. Creating chances is fine, but you’ve got to be scoring. The Conor Early shot was well saved by the keeper and Keiran Downey’s effort, I thought, he was nearly being squeezed out when he got the ball anyway.
‘It just appears to me that these other teams can squeeze us when we’re in there to stop us getting goals and yet, at the other end Cavan got three [goals], Cork got two today and we don’t be able to squeeze them. They’re getting through us with ease and finding space in the critical areas and we’re not doing that at the other end of the field, and that’s a wee bit of a concern as well.
‘We only scored three points from play today over the 70 minutes, and that’s not going to win you very many matches in Division 2 either.
‘We didn’t score that many from playing against Cavan. Our score against Down was, I think, 11 points and today was 10, so they’re not winning scores. We’re hitting well below average scores and we’re now into the second half of this league, so there are certainly improvements that need to come pretty quickly.
‘We’re still not threatening enough. We’re still not going forward enough in my view, with enough potency or enough penetration to put opposition teams under serious pressure. We’re doing it occasionally, but we’re not doing it often enough and I think we’re giving opposition defenses a pretty easy ride at the moment,’ he concluded.