Dublin boosted by red card, insists McGeeney

KIERAN McGEENEY conceded his side didn’t cope well with having an extra man for much of the game!.

His own theory (outlined in an interview not given to television, as decided by his players) is that having a numerical advantage isn’t a real benefit.

“What happens is the cumulative effect of the other team working harder,” he pointed out. “You can do psychology ‘til you are blue in the face, but when fellows know they have to work hard, it’s better than anything else you can teach them.”

By way of illuminating his point, the Kildare boss stated that his players allowed Dublin to slow the game down in the second half. The effect of that was to give the holders their “rest periods and get us on the counter”.

“We were very lethargic in our tackling because we had the extra man. We were taking an extra pass rather than moving the ball quicker – that is the biggest lesson,” he added. “We were most effective when we were getting the ball in first time. In the greasy conditions near the end, we fluffed four or five balls when we were going in to attack and there was only one point in it.”

Adamant that it was a game they should have won, he admitted that it was all the more difficult to accept defeat because of that belief. “It’s one of those things, especially in a close-fought game when you are sitting on the knife-edge. You don’t like to come out one side of it.

“It’s brilliant to be in the other bus, but that’s football. You’ll be on this side a lot more than on the other side. We’ll just have to learn from mistakes and then move on.”

Team captain John Doyle, who had to be treated for a head wound after an accidental clash with Denis Bastic, was devastated by the outcome, leaving nobody in the press room in doubt that however it might have come across as a spectacle, it certainly wasn’t as enjoyable to play in.

“It’s an old cliché – we are not here to entertain. For the neutral there was plenty of good football and open scores but not much consolation to us.

“We came here to win. It’s a sickening feeling when you build yourself up to win and you don’t achieve it. But, hopefully we can learn from it. The game was there for us right up to the end, but in fairness they got some good scores whereas some of our attacks broke down and they punished us.”

Selector Niall Carew is positive about the future, insisting that a Leinster title is still an achievable goal for them.

Conceding 1-3 very early in the game proved their undoing ultimately, he believed, feeling that some of their players – those with no experience of playing in Croke Park not to mention being in a Leinster final – were a little shell-shocked by it.

“You can’t afford to give any team that kind of a start, especially Dublin in Croke Park. But, we came back well. It probably gave us some hope that the team is capable of doing something special, which we believe. Half time came at the wrong time for us. We were well on top, at that stage. We would have hoped to keep that momentum going.”!