McGeeney: I erred taking O’Neill off
But the Armagh man rejected any suggestions the loss would not have hurt him as a non-native, insisting “it kills me”.
McGeeney and his selectors, Niall Carew and Aidan O’Rourke, have been heavily criticised for their own performances on Saturday but especially the call on O’Neill, who was replaced by Dermot Earley in the 29th minute despite having scored 1-1.
“To say I was disappointed would be an understatement” he stated in an interview on local radio station, Kfm. “Gutted would be closer to it. A lot of times in these situations, people like to put forward their opinions as if the players and management didn’t care if we won or lost but that wouldn’t be the case. People in Kildare probably don’t realise what football means to me. When I’m part of any team, losing kills me.
“You put yourself out there to be counted and if you’re not counted on the day you have to take the flak. That’s part and parcel of it. I’ll take it if people want to fire with all guns because you take it when people are slapping you on the back; so if they wanna give me a kick, I’ll take that too.”
He took responsibility for getting the decision on O’Neill wrong. “Páidí had scored a goal and a point but we were looking to get Dermot onto the pitch to get a couple of clean catches. We looked at who was causing a bit of problem, and their no. 5 (Ray Finnegan) was a bit, who Páidí was on. I’ll hold my hands up and looking back on it now, I think it was a mistake bringing Páidí off. Everybody makes mistakes; players, managers and I would hold my hands up and say it wasn’t a good decision.”
He admitted that Kildare had a lot of work to do between now and the qualifiers.
“If there was any one thing that caused the defeat you’d be happy because you could change that, but there was probably 15 or 16 small things. You were trying to put out fires continually during the game.”
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