Geraghty looking for more London progress

LONDON attacker Paul Geraghty has warned his side won’t rest on their laurels after Saturday’s sensational All-Ireland SFC qualifier victory over Fermanagh.

The Exiles were comprehensive winners over their disjointed Ulster visitors at Ruislip which hosted their extra-time defeat by Mayo in last month’s Connacht Championship.

And Geraghty believes this historic win — their first championship success since 1977 — underlines the progress the Exiles have made this year. “We knew we should have done better with the Mayo result,” admitted the London forward. “Lads really dug deep after that and training improved another 10 or 15%.

“From that point to now, we probably got a small bit fitter and gained a bit more experience. Championship is the best practice you can have, so if we can keep improving like this we will be very happy.”

Galway native Geraghty excelled at full-forward in the first-half, where London kicked six unanswered points to lead 0-9 to 0-1 at half-time, before reverting to his more familiar midfield role after the restart.

“We should have scored a bit more in the first-half,” he admitted. “But we knew if we gained a bit of a lead with the wind they would struggle to come back. In the second-half we probably gave away a lot of easy ball.

“A lot of our kick outs went astray and they scored some excellent points from far out. We let them back into it a small bit, but apart from that we were happy enough with our performance.” He added: “It’s been worth the wait, of course it has.You can see how much it means to a lot of the GAA people here in London. We’ll celebrate the win, but we’ll back to work on Tuesday for the next round.

“There’s more to come from this team, you can see the strength and depth in our panel. We have some great subs that can come in and score. When you have a team like that hopefully you can go far.”

Beleaguered Fermanagh boss John O’Neill had no complaints. His side had been outfought and outplayed, the off-field problems in the county undermining the team on the pitch. “We said all week that we weren’t going to underestimate London,” he said. “We saw their match against Mayo. They’re a Division One side and they got out of here by the skin of their teeth. We didn’t take them lightly, we prepared well for the match.

“London were just hungrier all over the pitch and a lot of our guys didn’t step up to the mark.

“There was a tremendous breeze out there. London kicked nine points in the first-half and we kicked eight (with the breeze) in the second. The difference was London got six more scores against the breeze. We never go to grips with the first 20 minutes, we never got any breaking ball. Ultimately that opening period cost us the game.”