Duffy not surprised by Louth turnaround

WHAT a difference a week makes.

Rewind six days and a bloodied and bitterly disappointed Bevan Duffy obligingly tried to dissect Louth’s defeat to Longford.

The Reds’ captain didn’t try to dress it up, but he truly believed that if a few kinks could be ironed out there was no reason why a high-flying Laois side couldn’t be toppled at Croke Park.

‘Last week we felt we should have won and we let ourselves down,’ he said. ‘We showed a lot of fight, and we want that to be a given every time we take the field, but I thought it was our skills and decision-making that let us down last week.

‘So it’s great to come up here this week and pick up a win like that against a fancied Laois team. We knew if we put in a performance and ironed a few of those minor issues out that we’d be capable winning the game and that’s what happened.

‘Part of it might have been the surface, there’s a big difference between here and Drogheda - it’s a quicker pitch. But we were getting rewarded today and last week it was little small things that caused moves to break down and cost us in the end. Today everything seemed to go well for us.’

But it wasn’t always plain-sailing and discipline in the tackle remains an issue as Duffy, Conor Early and Andy McDonnell were black-carded, while John Clutterbuck picked up a red late on.

‘We didn’t make it easy on ourselves. We got a black card in the first half and I thought there were a few silly mistakes again that need to be stamped out. We put ourselves under pressure a bit when we didn’t need to because I thought we were in control of the game.

‘But outside of that it was good, the subs came in and made a difference. I thought Tommy Durnin was immense, pure dog work and fighting and driving the team on.’

The focus switches to Offaly now and a trip to Tullamore next Sunday for a game that will go a long way to deciding which end of the table the Reds will spend

the campaign.

‘I think we beat them in the league down there two years ago. I don’t know much about them, I heard [Niall] McNamee is back and it’ll be interesting to see if he plays.

‘The lads [management] will do their homework on Offaly and we’ll just focus on ourselves, get our recovery done and then on to the pitch on Tuesday again and we’ll take it from there. I’d be confident if we can produce a similar performance to today that we can get a result.

‘If we can pick up two points next week, who knows we can be looking at fighting for promotion. This team is good enough, we showed that two years ago.’