The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
‘We just didn’t perform. We started well, but they strangled us out of it’
THE Lixnaw manager Fergus Fitzmaurice offered no excuses whatsoever.
Put quite simply the better team won. Obviously, all involved were hugely disappointed at losing out, but, looking back on the season overall, it’s been an extremely rewarding one for the club, with the highlight being, their ninth Senior Championship success.
“Beaten by a better team,” he said.
“We are just disappointed that we didn’t perform to the way we normally can perform. It’s a sign of the lads inside in the dressing room that we are all very disappointed. We just didn’t perform. We started well, but they strangled us out of it for the remaining forty five minutes, but as we said inside it’s been a great year for us and it’s been a tough year for us.
“We are kings of our own castle, we won a county championship and we just came up short today, but we will be back. Sometimes actually it’s more difficult to play with the breeze than against it and we struggled withit.
“It was probably the downfall of us, the goal, obviously, as you said a killer blow, because we were up 5-1 at one stage at the start of the first half, but the goal obviously brought them back.
“But hands down they were the better team and they have superb hurlers, very well coached, their movement of the ball, the running off the ball and their ball retention was excellent.
“They did [look sharper] and you would think we would be sharper we were sluggish and that’s maybe my fault, or the management’s fault, we could [maybe] have done things different during the week, but there’s no point having the answers after it the horse has bolted now so yeah, they were the better team and the better team won the game.
“They [players missing] couldn’t affect the game, they were out that was it we had fellows ready to go and we used nineteen or twenty lads and we just came up short, the better team won.
“A great year, a young squad there, a few old fellas there also, there’s plenty of miles left in them yet. I would hope they will stay going, because, they are the fellows that are driving it on.
“The younger fellas are great as well, the club is in a very healthy state, facilities are great. We probably need to do a bit of work on our juveniles, but knowing all in our club, and, all of our volunteers, fellows will row in in January, we will put in a big workload again and hopefully Lixnaw will be challenging again, this time next year.”