‘We were outplayed in the first half’
Gerry Buckley reports
“It’s very disappointing and it will take a while to get over it.” Understandably, this was the immediate post-match reaction of The Downs manager Lar Wall after his side had been decisively beaten by Kilmacud Crokes in last Sunday’s Leinster club football final at Croke Park.
Trailing by 11 points at half-time, and 13 some seven minutes into the second moiety, the Westmeath champions rallied with trademark spirit to reduce the final margin to a respectable seven. In this regard, Wall said: “You often see that when the game is gone, you throw the kitchen sink at it, throw off the shackles, that’s kind of the way it happened.
"At half-time, you would say the game was over. Against the wind in the first half was always going to be a challenge in our first Leinster final against a top quality team. We contained them quite well early on, but it was too much of a gap.
“Listen, we were outplayed in the first half. There is no point in saying anything else. Basically, we got turned over too many times on the ball. We generally back ourselves on being slick and not bringing the ball too often into contact.”
When asked if joint-captain Luke Loughlin had lost the pre-match toss, his bainisteoir stated: “I assume so. Luke was going to play with it if we won the toss but, listen, I’m not sure that’s an argument. Crokes were by far the superior team, they just dominated us physically anytime we got a bit of momentum carrying the ball.
"We didn’t have that runner coming we could offload to. Crokes, to be fair, tackled well also. That was the biggest disappointment, we couldn’t work the ball through but, listen, fair play to them they really had their homework done, and they snuffed us out when we moved the ball.”
In his first year in charge, the Laois man got The Downs to a Leinster final, and it was suggested to him that he should be proud of that achievement.
He responded: “Yeah absolutely, but when you are at this point you don’t think like that. I was here two weeks ago and was thinking it’s great to be in a Leinster final, but straight away the prize is huge and the consequences are huge. We suffered a big defeat, but we brought back the score to seven points which was respectable in the end. Yes, when we reflect back, we had a good year.”
Countless column inches have been written about the rights and wrongs of All Star Shane Walsh’s transfer from intermediate club Kilkerrin-Clonberne in Galway to the huge Dublin club that is Kilmacud Crokes.
However, there is no denying his excellence as a footballer, and Wall sportingly concluded by concurring: “He was a bit subdued the last day, and I was fearful he’d come to life today as he did in the All-Ireland (against Kerry). I stood there watching him in the All-Ireland final thinking how would you mark him. He's very hard to stop as he has pace, and he has power, and he can score.
"We did the best we could on him. If you're on top you might have some chance, but when you’re swimming against the tide it’s very hard to contain Shane Walsh. He’s a top quality player.”