'There wasn't a lot in that' says Flanagan after controversial red card in Kildare clash

Like most of the rest of us at St Conleth's Park on Saturday evening, Kildare manager, Brian Flanagan, admitted it was a hard game to sum up quickly after the final whistle.

“An awful lot went on, black cards, yellow cards, red cards, goals, some that were not meant to be goals, all that kind of stuff, add in the weather, the conditions, not making excuses for the result just saying that, right now, it is very hard to analyse and break-down, we'll watch it when we get home, meet tomorrow and go through it in more detail but initially very disappointed, we were in a good position at half-time but it does feel we left the game behind us.”

Not surprisingly the manager said that the first ten minutes of the second half cost them, we were playing catch up after that, we never caught up, never got our noses in front, those goals were a real succour blow, just felt we were flat during that ten minutes or so, never brought the energy that is needed against a very strong running team like Derry, they started getting ahead of us, you are always scrambling at that point.”

Did he put that down to inexperience?
“We know they (Kildare) are young, and inexperience can come against you at different times and maybe that was the case tonight but there are huge learnings for all of us, we did say at the start of this league we would win games and lose games and to date we have won, drew and now lost, we have done all three in our three games, it is going to be a roller-coaster throughout this league, but game management, experience and know-how against a side like Derry who are five or six years into this, I thought their conditioning showed in the last ten minutes and their decision-making under pressure certainly helped them.”

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On Alex Beirne sending off, the manager said he didn't catch what happened, “we will have a look at that when we get home, we were a man up at that point, we had an extra man at that stage, there was a lot happening on the field, keeping your head and discipline is key, we were trying to get that message out to the players, I do think there was a lot of little incidents, flash points, from that first red card right up to half-time but we'll learn from it, the players will learn from it but from our point of view, from Alex's point of view, there wasn't a lot in that, and the reaction was what the reaction was but we didn't see a whole lot, we will review in the next view hours and we will be hoping to over-turn that.”

On Darragh Kirwan, the manager said getting some 25 minutes of action will stand to him, the same with Neil Flynn, Sam Doran, it is good to get them back healthy and able to play and now it is about finding their form, that could take some time, lads just don't click into top form after being out but that will do them all good tonight.”

On bringing Aaron O'Neill back into the squad Flanagan said “he was always a lad we would be interested in, he was out injured last season but now that he is fit, we brought him back, will look at him over the next few weeks and see how he goes.”

Summing up the second-half performance Flanagan said he felt “we went away from what we said we would do, whether you put that down to inexperience, playing the score board but really we went away from our plan and that is the big disappoint-
ment, there are plenty of aspects of the game that disappointed but plenty of aspects we are happy with, a bit of know-how, that experience that Derry side coming down the stretch to see them through definitely paid off.”

The manager added that the positive side of the game is that we were able to live with a side such as Derry, they brought the energy and momentum to the game, from their win last week, and you could tell how much it meant to them when the final whistle arrived but these are great games to be involved, yes we are disappointed, but this is where we want to be and we will learn from it.

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