Kildare win hasn't come without a cost insists Brian Flanagan

You just can't analyse a game like, straight after it anyway, the wind had a massive impact, and as you saw over the weekend, thirty points is now nearly a winning score.

The words of Kildare manager, Brian Flanagan, who added that “you need now to get to that 25-30 point margin, is was like back to January-February conditions with that wind but delighted with the wind, we were under the cosh in the home stretch, I thought the lads dug it out; got hands on very important ball at different stages, I though we managed the game very well in the end.”

The manager said that “under the old rules you would call it a six-seven point wind but now it is a 10-12 game but we knew going out in the second half we would have to manage possession the best we could, if that meant long periods in control of the ball, so be it, but it actually became even very difficult to do that in the second half, Sligo pressed us all over the field, you had the wind in your face; we made a couple of mistakes that didn't help at times but you were never comfortable, even at 10 or 12 points, 55 minutes in, I wasn't thinking this job was done, three two-pointers and the game was on again.

“It became about heart, grit, winning dirty ball, finding a way to latch on to one or two more scores to get us over the line and that game management we have been working on all year came to the fore in the last couple of minutes.

On an update of the injuries picked up during the game, Flanagan said “the win hasn't come without a cost Ben (McCormack) said he felt something in the hamstring in the warm-up that followed into the game; Jimmy (Hyland) felt his calf 20 minutes in and then Callum (Bolton) just back from a quad injury, felt his other quad go; we will take stock of all those in the next few days.”

As for the lads missing on Sunday the manager said “they are on a better time line, we expect to see Darragh (Kirwan) train this week; Ryan (Houlihan) in the next ten days or so; disappointing to lose lads but there are fallen soldiers in every game, unfortunately.”

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