O’Brien hails huge effort

THE endeavour of both teams in trying circumstances was foremost in Eamonn O’Brien’s mind when he discussed what had occurred out in Croke Park for the previous 90 minutes.

At times, the downpour was beyond torrential and if that made handling extremely difficult – just ask the unfortunate Mickey Nolan – and called on a level of desire that the 44 players who saw action had in abundance.

“The effort from our lads and the effort from Laois was excellent” said the Meath boss.

“For amateur players to be able to play with the intensity they did for almost 90 minutes is a mark of the effort they put in. I thought it was wonderful. Okay, the quality of football at times could have been better, but you can’t have everything.”

O’Brien’s crew had plenty of opportunities to kill Laois off and should have done so when five points clear with 15 minutes to go. Even when Laois drew level, the otherwise brilliant Joe Sheridan kicked a dreadful wide and Peadar Byrne looked set to swoop but was blocked by Paul Lawlor. They also went two points up in the first period of extra time and a goal ahead with less than five minutes to go.

“We needed to kick on. With that type of lead a goal chance will always leave you not out of reach. A goal puts it back in the melting pot.

“It’s whoever gets momentum at that stage, and Laois got it today with the goal. We were glad to hold on,” he said.

“We’ll look at it and see what happened, but this is not a game you can strategise for. The players have to do it in the moment themselves, and make it up, do it intuitively.

“And that’s the way football is. You can’t set out a plan and say it will go exactly to that, some big plan that I design. It has to happen on the field and in the moment.”

He conceded that there was a huge degree of fortune to Cormac McGuinness’s goal and admitted that while he’d have taken it, it wouldn’t have been the most satisfactory way to win.

“In one way it would have been disappointing if that was the winning score. Having gone through that contest, and it was a great contest, you’d want to win it by doing something special.”