'Gutted' Gately praises effort of Athlone players despite defeat

Although Athlone's senior championship hopes were ended by local rivals Garrycastle last Saturday, team manager Malachy Gately praised the efforts of his players this season - as he highlighted the champions' experience and know-how. "Every mistake we made, they punished it and even with the 'extra man' (after Garrycastle had a player sent off), they were able to find an extra man somewhere. Work-rate summed up that game. We had an opportunity to attack and one of our players, a couple of the players, pulled out of a fifty-fifty tackle and you can't afford to do that in a local derby, They had men going for balls they had no right to win," said the Athlone manager. "Even at the end, Dessie (Dolan) knew exactly what to do - bring down the man, stop the game and game over. Pure experience. I can't fault the desire of the lads ... but we let them build from the back too much. Our lads were up for it. I genuinely would have put my mortgage on it coming in here that we had a chance. But you've seen it, not just in club football, but in county football, that 14 men will work ten times harder and it was proved there tonight," he continued. 'Best team won' Though he acknowledged that the "best team won" and that Garrycastle are "worthy champions", Gately was unhappy with some of the refereeing decisions made by Sean Carroll. "There were a lot of decisions that were bordering on frees and we seemed to get nothing in there at all, a couple of our forwards. I just thought we had to do an awful lot to get a free, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. But every time we scored, there were able to go down and get one or two (points), and they kept ahead of us." The loss of Paul Bannon through an ankle injury was a blow for an Athlone side already missing regular centre-back Damien Kelly. "Paul Bannon was carrying a knock all the time and another stalwart, Tom Stuart-Trainor, was carrying a knock. But the biggest loss to us was my player of the championship so far, Damo (Damien) Kelly. Damo tried everything to get back, we just couldn't fill that gap, although Tom (Stuart-Trainor), did the best he could. Paul went and got an injection this morning but obviously it was too bad, and when you take two star footballers out of our team, we're struggling straight away." Athlone found it difficult to score from open play to supplement the free-taking skills of Joe Fallon, and Gately admitted they needed a goal to spark a second-half revival. "We never looked like creating a goal unless something broke around the edge of the square. You have game plans and you try and keep it wide. They threw the ball around well to suck us into the middle. "But the great thing is that we brought 10 or 11 young guys today as part of the panel. I don't know what's going to happen next year, but there is a good future for Athlone," he said. "I can't fault the effort of the players. We trained well. If there is such a thing, they're probably too nice. People were saying that they were hard to control, I had no trouble controlling them. You won't get a better bunch of lads. They probably have a bad name out there for some reason as regards being hard to handle. We had a couple of discipline problems but they were brought on board and I can honestly say that every one of them gave me 100 per cent. "I'm gutted. I lost the county (intermediate) final at home with St Dominic's last year and I'm every bit as sick after losing that one. We did nearly 60 training sessions. In January and February when there was frost on the ground, those lads ran for two hours up through snow and everything like that. I feel sorry for them. I put it down to lack of experience but, listen, the best team won on the day," concluded Gately.