‘We kind of got out of jail’ – Westmeath manager
By Paul Hughes
Westmeath ladies football manager Frank Browne is focusing on the positives of his side's display in last Sunday's draw against Offaly, though admitting that his charges “got out of jail” late on.
“I thought we owned the ball, and we stuck to our plan. We showed great character. But the reality is that we are down to about 40% scoring efficiency. You wouldn’t win an argument with that, never mind a game of football,” the Mayo native said after Sunday’s game at Home Instead Lakepoint Park, Mullingar.
“On the other hand, if you’re not creating those chances, you’re in trouble. We were creating them this week. The way the championship is, as I have just said to the girls, is that this game is gone now. We have to flush the toilet of that because next week we are in Wicklow. We will park it and move on.
“We have a couple of injuries and niggles but we will get all of those sorted out and head to Blessington or Aughrim, or wherever we are going next week.”
On the wide count, Browne added: “I’m dreading looking at the video in some ways. But look, we are generating the chances. We stuck to it, and we kind of got out of jail.”
With Ellee McEvoy and Emma Hand running the show for Offaly through the middle in Sunday’s first half, Browne and his management team were forced to devise a new strategy during the interval.
“We changed tactics at half-time where we put somebody in to fill that gap,” he said. “The downside of that was that we couldn’t go full-court press on their kick-outs, which we were getting a bit of value from. When we talked about it at half-time, we said that we’d have to block up the middle and sacrifice the full-court press.
“But when a you’re a point down in a championship match with ten minutes to go, you throw everything at it so then we reverted back to the full-court press. That’s how we generated some of the scoring chances at the end.
“One thing that was very frustrating was the number of fouls inside the 45-metre line. I was fairly vocal on it there but that was Offaly’s tactic. If you go inside their 45, you get pulled down. We try to play open football and go at teams, without any of the cynicism, but that’s the way it is.”
On a day when Westmeath struggled with their shot selection, Browne was happy to see wing backs Rachel Dillon and Chloe Kelly making the scoresheet – the latter with a crucial stoppage-time point.
“We are always watching both Rachel and Chloe, the two wing backs. Because of the type of game we play, they would normally find themselves, once or twice in a game, in that scoring position,” he explained.
“Fair play to Chloe. When we really needed it, she pulled one out of the bag. She was a bit harsh on herself for giving away a ball that led to a goal in the first half. That might help her to lift the head.
“The big thing for us is that we all lift our heads, pull ourselves together, get our recovery done, and away we go. Nothing was won, and nothing was lost, and it’s a fine first day of summer.”