Woods: we paid dearly for missed chances

AS he shuffled out of the dressing room eyes to the floor and into the RTÉ studio next door, Rory Woods looked more like an errant schoolboy being summoned to the headmasters’ office than the guy who had been named man-of-the-match.

Players routinely give sound-bytes about how unimportant individual rewards are in these team games but that was far beyond a cliché yesterday after Monaghan let the county’s biggest-ever scalp slip through their fingers. The hurt was palpable on Seamus McEnaney’s face. Though he himself talked at length to the press afterwards he did so with one arm thrown across the door of the changing room.

It was too soon to impose on the funereal atmosphere but Woods found himself with little option but to face the dictaphones as he made his way back from his TV duties.

“We really believed we could get the win coming down here today,” he said. “Everybody’s head is down. It’s just very disappointing. We had another goal chance there near the end which we didn’t take.

“We got a few chances like that and we were made pay for not taking them. We needed to be more clinical in front of goal. We’re not pointing fingers at anyone. We all made mistakes out there and Kerry capitalised on them.”

It was a cruel way to lose. Four times Kerry reeled in Monaghan’s leads and four times McEnaney’s men responded with another kick away from their pursuers but Woods conceded that Kerry’s nous might have been the winning of the game in the end.

“It was their experience. We had finished every championship game we played this year very strongly but it just didn’t happen for us on the day.”

Though Woods might have captured the garlands for a display that coughed up three points from play, Monaghan could point to heroic performances on every line of the pitch. No more so than at the back.

Rusty though Kerry were, keeping Colm Cooper and Kieran Donaghy scoreless from play for 70 minutes was no mean feat even if it doesn’t mean much when scraping through the ashes of a defeat.

“It’s very frustrating. Kerry persisted with the high ball into the square all day and I thought the boys at the back coped brilliantly. With the amount of balls they hit they were always going to get a few chances but our lads did well.

“It doesn’t matter if we were beaten by ten points or one point, the fact is we were beaten. Having said that, we know we have improved an awful lot under this management team. Next year we’ll get better and stronger. We will be back next year.”

McEnaney spoke about how Armagh and Tyrone had to endure cruel defeats in Croke Park before they reached the promised land in the past ten years and Monaghan have now learned harsh lessons.

“We will look back on this (season) as a chance missed. We could have won today and maybe should have. Hopefully we can learn and come back for it the stronger,” he said.