Disappointment all round as Dawson defends strategy

Frank Dawson was unrepentant about Antrim’s defensive strategy, which had the hallmarks of damage limitation written all over it.

The Saffrons kicked a grand total of six points in their last Ulster SFC match before Casement Park is demolished, and persisted with Mark Sweeney as a sweeper even when they had an extra man for most of the second-half.

“We spent the last nine weeks trying to turn around what everyone was telling us was the dismal state of Antrim football,” he said.

“People thought we’d get beat by 20 points. Some people wondered why the Ulster Council were even bothering to have a game today.

“Okay we’re disappointed with the six points and we know we have a lot to work on, but give us time.

“When Jim McGuinness was in his first year in charge of Donegal he was quite happy to win two points to one.”

Malachy O’Rourke summed up the level of disappointment within the Monaghan ranks about their performance when he admitted: “we won’t have scared anyone today”.

“The performance wasn’t what we wanted but we had one objective and that was to come here and win,” said the manager.

“You have to remember, Antrim were completely written off coming into this match and the boys were listening to that all the time.

“When we went five points to one up after the first 15 minutes, we slackened off.

“We know we need massive improvement for the next day.

“We know we haven’t scared anybody today and we need to improve a lot if we want to go further in the competition.”

The sending-off of Neil McAdam in the 39th minute for a harsh second yellow card offence actually kick-started Monaghan into life.

O’Rourke, desperately searching for positives, was delighted with their response. “The sending-off injected more purpose into our play. We needed a spark to get us going again and that’s probably what happened. It seemed fairly harsh anyway but that was pleasing that the boys were able to put a bit of daylight between them.”