Whelan rues The Nire’s missed opportunity

For The Nire boss Benji Whelan, yesterday was all about what might have beens.

A six-point head start and playing with an extra man for much of the game wasn’t enough to see the Waterford champions home.

“I suppose with the start we got, we should have kicked on but we invited them onto us a bit, which didn’t help at all.

“But the amount of silly mistakes we made today was incredible after the run we’ve had, so I’d say when I sit down and watch it, I’ll be sick.

“On the other side of it you couldn’t argue with Stacks — they were strong, they were running with force, there was power there — they’re a fine football outfit and they’ll take a little bit of stopping.

“Stephen (Stack) will probably say they’ll need to sharpen up a bit in terms of the opportunities they’re missing.”

They weren’t the only ones, given The Nire’s eight second-half wides.

“You can’t commit errors like that and expect to get away with it, but it’s a learning experience.

“They’ve stood up an awful lot this year and they’ve moved on — every time we’ve asked them to step up they’ve done it, and this was a big step up for them.

“Maybe it was a little bit too much on the day but I’d be disappointed with the errors, we coughed up the ball... we worked so hard this year on not taking the ball into contact, into the tackle, and what do we do, take the bloody ball into the tackle nearly every time.

“Credit to them, they were set up very well in defence, Stephen had his work done in that regard and we probably hadn’t come up against that prior to this, it’s just a learning curve but there’s always next year.

“Hopefully we’ll kick on and put it to good use.”

Whelan was still ruing his side’s inability to build on a bright start.

“I’ve spoken about it before, ‘put the boot in when you get the chance’, and maybe we’re just not there yet.

“Back home, they were all behind us, and I’m disappointed for them too. It would have been a great step for everyone in Waterford, to come out of the county and do something strong, but that’s it, my head is addled.”

Whelan acknowledged that he and the management hadn’t planned for having an extra man: “We didn’t have a plan for that and again that’s a learning experience we’ll take on board as management.

“We didn’t put it to any use, our spare man was standing back in defence though at times he was going forward.

We just had too many defensive-minded lads and we did our utmost to get off some defenders and put on some attackers to instil some drive up front, but unfortunately it didn’t work.

“We’ll get the lads together one more time next week — the year’s not over for them, we’ll have a bit of homework to do and address some of the things that happened so we can kick on.”