O’Donnell not happy with wides count

“WE made it harder for ourselves than was necessary.”

That was the summation of Ballygunner manager Niall O’Donnell following his side’s victory over Drom-Inch yesterday.

“Someone said we had 16 wides and we’re not happy with that, gives us a lot to work on. At least we put ourselves in position to get the scores, which is a positive from that. With a bit of luck those balls will go over the bar the next day. It was very uncharacteristic for Páidí [Pauric] Mahony to miss those frees, you see him in the summer and he’s exceptional, Brian O’Sullivan likewise.

“In fairness they got going in the second half and that takes character and both Páidí and Brian got great points at a critical stage, which pushed us four points clear – that’s credit to them. Drom-Inch are a good team, Tipp county champions. We came up here confident in our own ability but we knew we’d face a challenge.”

While his attack was misfiring somewhat, Niall had no complaints about his defence. The full-back line of Alan Kirwan, Barry Coughlin and Willie Kiely conceded no score and a half-back trio in which Wayne Hutchinson was outstanding won them the game.

“I thought our backs were exceptional; we did a lot of work on Drom-Inch and even though we thought they had a few weaknesses in defence, we felt they had an exceptional set of forwards. Our backs did very well on them.

“Na Piarsaigh next – I don’t know a whole lot about them. Jim O’Keeffe, one of our selectors, said he saw them earlier in the year in Limerick and thought they were a very good outfit. We’ll do our homework in the next few weeks. Ballygunner teams always go out to play good hurling, and if we do that and come up against a better team, well and good.

“But we go out to play hurling, prepare to do our best, and hope for the win.”