Dempsey all smiles as his charges finally pass the acid test
Three weeks in which Luke Dempsey answered the SOS and put their senior footballers back on the rails. Asked afterwards where this win ranked in his personal achievements list, Dempsey’s smile said everything. His departure from Westmeath probably hurt the man more than he allowed at the time. Yesterday was therapeutic for both him and his new charges.
“This is one of the best in the sense that when I came down to Carlow I was my own boss,” he explained. “I have learnt an awful lot in the last year about myself and the love I have for managing teams. I’ve implemented what I’ve learnt up in Leixlip who I’ve been training since January 3rd.
“I’ve tried to improve my style of management on my own and I’m delighted that these three weeks were mine with a group of lads who listened to everything and got their reward.”
For Dempsey the period after Padraic Davis’ second-half goal, when the deficit was halved from six to three points, was the acid test of Carlow’s mettle. One they had failed too often in the past.
“It was said at half-time that Longford would come back at them if they went ahead. Championship matches go through phases and all I was worried about was, would the mindset so prevalent in past Carlow teams undo them. But it didn’t. Thomas Walsh took that game by the scruff of the neck from midfield, along with the likes of Mark Carpenter.”
The biggest threat to Carlow as the game wound down was the burly Niall Sheridan, a constant thorn in the side of Carlow full-back Stephen O’Brien with his scores, high fielding and support play. O’Brien struggled gamely, but switching another marker onto the attacker would have been splitting hairs, according to Dempsey.
“I know Niall Sheridan from old. It wouldn’t matter who was marking him because of the quality of the ball coming in. Stephen O’Brien is our most physical back. I didn’t want to move John Hayden from centre back or Joe Byrne from the wing because they’re our other strong backs. It was a matter of damage limitation really. Niall Sheridan is an awesome man in full-forward.”
Dempsey’s counterpart Denis Connerton looked like a man waiting for the earth to swallow him. Little seemed to have been said in the Longford dressing room afterwards. The wounds too raw perhaps.
Connerton rejected suggestions that they didn’t attempt to make full use of their full-forward until it was too late though. Wanting to feed him and actually managing it are two entirely separate things, he claimed.
“It was part of our game plan [to feed Sheridan] and sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. Maybe with the wind against us in the first half we wouldn’t have been able to get the ball in as far as we would have liked. It certainly worked in the second half but we fell asleep. We made blunders and they punished them,” he reasoned.
“We’re disappointed to get beaten but the Carlow forward line was exceptional today. They kicked something like five wides all day, which was exceptional and we can have no complaints. We’re just very disappointed with our own game defensively.
“Jesus, we were so naive it was unbelievable. We’re disappointed with that aspect of the game. We scored 1-16 and when you do that you don’t lose a game. It’s as simple as that.”
For Carlow, Laois now await as the prize for their exertions.
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