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.