Flanagan pleased with Stacks efforts as O’Neill says best team won

AUSTIN Stacks manager Pat Flanagan was pleased with his team’s victory, but appreciated that Legion would throw everything at them in the second half having trailed by 10 points at half time.

“Delighted [with the first half] and the opening to the second half. The lads worked pretty hard, we asked them just to work hard, put in a big effort, and they did it,” Flanagan said. “They ran from all over the pitch, closed Legion down for a lot of it. But Legion were always going to come at us, they were never going to lie down and leave us run away with the game, so it was always going to get a bit hard.

“I said to the lads at half time ‘they are not going to lie down, they are going to come running at ye’, and they did. One of the goals came after what we thought was a free, but the lads knuckled down, and got some nice scores after that which was good.

“You are always anxious when you have somebody like James O’Donoghue on the pitch, who can do damage in a couple of minutes, so we were anxious the whole time, until maybe we got ten (points) back up, settled the game down again.

“We are delighted, the lads worked very hard since last January, and they deserve it. They deserve everything that they get,” Flanagan said. “We have good footballers, some lovely good young footballers with lots of pace. The last couple of games here in Connolly Park we looked a bit nervous, but tonight they didn’t look nervous at all, they looked good.

“We have a number of players coming back from injury, we might even have somebody like Conor Jordan back by the time the Championship clicks in again, or close. Colin Griffin, yeah, and Dara O’Brien did everything to try and be fit for tonight’s game, but just didn’t make it, so hopefully we will have players who will step up.”

Meanwhile, Legion manager Alan O’Neill had few complaints with the result, conceding that his team were beaten by the better team on the night.

“We were second best, without a doubt. The start they got was exactly what we didn’t want to happen. They got a goal very early on, we were on the back foot then and chasing our tails a good bit. We missed a bit as well, which kind of rattled us I think. We created a couple of chances in the first half, when we shot the first two points, I thought we were kind of on the money, but it dried up very quickly. They had bodies back then, they covered off well, and they broke very hard with pace, so they were difficult to play against, we weren’t at the races,” O’Neill said.

“[The second half] was just frantic at that stage. There was balls going across the box, we were getting a hand in, they were breaking, we scored three goals, we probably had another four or five shots, but it would have been false, I have to be honest about it.

“We created and we did trouble them definitely, but we were on the back foot for the whole game. You look for something at the start of the second half (but) they bang in two goals.

“In fairness to the lads they showed a lot of character. We couldn’t fault them, but what fellows must understand is the run of games we have had, the size of our panel. It’s been tough going for the last six, seven weeks, and like we only played last Sunday, we trained once during the week, a couple of injuries, it makes it tough. But that’s not making excuses.

“Stacks were really on the money tonight and they outplayed us definitely, but another day with the goal chances we created, it could have been different, but I think they were full value.”