Win will do us the world of good says Kildare manager

Kildare manager, Brian Flanagan, was certainly very honest in his after-match assessment following his side's two point win over Westmeath on Saturday evening.

“Ray Connellan (Westmeath) going off injured was a big help; a black card they picked up was a big moment as well and all little things went in our our favour in the second half but for the first 40 or 45 minutes I didn't think they were but definitely the lads from a character point of view, from a desire point of view, just that refusal to lose and give the people of Kildare that kind of a night to give ourselves that confidence booster going into the next couple of weeks, have to say I'm very, very proud of them.”

The manager said that his Kildare team is a young side, sprinkled with a little bit of leadership, older heads and wiser heads such as Kevin Feely, Hylo, Niall Kelly comes on and does brilliant, Mick O'Grady finished the thing out, the older fellas are still giving us a huge amount but the youth, lads making their debuts, the first year of championship action all stepped up to the plate massively, you only have to look at the likes of Tommy Gill coming on, he have us a lot of legs, a lot of front foot, scored well, the impact and the depth of the squad is definitely growing.”

Asked what was said at half-time, the manager said “obviously we had a discussion about the kick-outs, we felt we were just resorting to going on when there were short to medium options on, part of that was probably the moving patterns we were painting for Cian (Burke) in front of him” adding “I think we have him a little bit more in the second half in that regard and he picked off a couple of very good options that gave us options of getting hands on ball, a little bit simpler; Westmeath dominated those longs in the first half and then there was also a battle going on around Kevin Feely and our lads needed to protect him a little more and protect Callum when the big men were getting up , I thought the half-
forward helped out a lot in that second half.”

While acknowledging there were some great catches in the second half, the manager said that while it's great to see “it can't be your go-to everything, you have to mix your kick-outs up, I thought Conor McCormack (Westmeath) was excellent, picked off a range of kicks outs but there is learning from this for us; a lot of inexperience on our side but tonight will do us the world of good.”

The manager added “our conversion rate is not where we want to be but we're getting there.”

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