We were hanging on at the end, admits relieved McCartan

JAMES McCARTAN wore the look of a relieved man after the breathless finish to yesterday’s All-Ireland semi-final.

A match which Down had been controlling comfortably when they led by seven points in the 57th minute morphed into a game where they were clinging on at the final whistle and needed Kalum King’s fingertips to prevent Rob Kelly from smashing in a winning goal for Kildare.

“To be honest my head is still spinning,” remarked the Down boss.

“It’s just relief. With seven or eight minutes to go, we were six points up. I certainly knew the game wasn’t won but you hoped to close it out from there. But typical Kieran McGeeney and Aidan O’Rourke team, they kept coming and coming. I think Hugh Lynch stuck over a couple of wonder scores with the outside of the boot. Then the goal came. Look, we were probably hanging on at the end, to see the ball hit the crossbar, it could have gone anywhere. We were just relieved to see it stay out.

“I felt we played poorly for the first quarter. We needed Benny’s goal to kick-start us. We won the second quarter and I felt we won the third quarter. We were in the process of starting well in the final quarter, but then in the last eight minutes it was all one-way traffic.

“But I still felt like Down teams I played on, we were still a scoring threat. We maybe did sit back a bit but when the ball went up we did create chances. We kept the scoreboard ticking and at the other end, the odd point here and there against the run of play pushed us over the line.”

A critical moment was Benny Coulter’s first-half goal with television pictures indicating that it should have been disallowed for a square ball. But McCartan felt matters were evened up when Kildare were awarded ‘soft frees’.

“When you are along the line you don’t see a lot of the marginal incidents. If the ball was a square ball we will take the bit of luck. We got it. I am not sure. There was a couple of things to be honest I felt it may have been evened up quickly with a couple of soft frees to cancel it out.

“But again I am not trying to downplay it. Obviously we had the rub of the green with the last free kick, it could have gone anywhere. If you guys decide we got a wee bit of luck I will always say I would rather be a lucky manager than a good one.”

McCartan had sympathy for the devastated players in the Kildare dressing-room afterwards and revealed it was difficult to speak to them.

“I was in there with those guys. You go in and they don’t really want to see you but you try and be as respectful as you can but it is difficult because I didn’t have the words for those boys in there.

“I know the demands Mr McGeeney and Aidan O’Rourke would have made of those men. Especially the year that was in it with Dermot Snr etc, I would be lying if I said that I didn’t feel for them. But I don’t want to be patronising to them either.

“There’s no doubt, the likes of Johnny Doyle and Dermot Earley deserve an All-Ireland medal and All Stars. But if you look at all the teams we think we have a couple of men that deserve them as well. Cork will be looking at it the same way, guys like Graham Canty and that. I am not sure how many All-Irelands Cork have been in over the last number of years but certainly more than us so we have another uphill task ahead of us.”