McEntee: More to come from Crossmaglen

CROSSMAGLEN joint-manager Tony McEntee has warned the best is yet to come from his side.

For the second game in succession, the All-Ireland champions had a blistering start, taking a six-point lead by the 21st minute. But McEntee believes his team are more than able of extending their purple patches with only 140 minutes left between them and a repeat of last season’s Andy Merrigan Cup success.

“We’ve spent two years now trying to put a stamp and style of football on ourselves and that style is fast, kicking, free-flowing type, which involves a lot of movement from players with a work-rate.

“Two years down the road, we do it for 30 minutes per match at different spells. If we can improve that, make it 40, 50, God love it 60 minutes we’ll be very hard to beat. As a management, the most pleasing thing is what we work on is what comes to fruition on the field and that brings satisfaction.”

Asked if the win was sweeter than last year’s final win over Naomh Conaill, the 2002 All-Ireland winner shrugged: “No, it’s just another victory, little more than another win and progression towards an All-Ireland.

“Once we got out of Armagh we had six or seven matches to win an All-Ireland and we’ve two left and that’s our target.”

Burren boss Frank Dawson believed they would have fared much better if they had their full complement of players for more than 15 minutes when Anton McArdle was shown the line.

“I was standing alongside Martin Sludden, the linesman. All I saw was the linesman was 10 yards away from it, the referee was 10 yards away and none of the two saw anything and the linesman on the far side called it. Now, 80 yards away is 80, in the gloom and he calls it. I don’t want this to detract from Crossmaglen but I find that hard to understand.”