DESPITE STAYING IN touch for much of the first-half of yesterday’s Leinster semi-final, Jason Ryan was far from happy with how his team were performing.
Losing key battles across the field, and being physically outclassed by Meath, Ryan admits he might have made his personnel changes earlier.
“Unfortunately you’re only able to make six substitutions, so our scenario was – which six are you going to make because we felt the only line that we felt were kind of performing was the full-forward line.”
Despite leading up until the half-time whistle, Kildare found themselves conceding 2-7 between the final ten minutes of the first-half and the first eight minutes of the second.
“Unforunately at times Kildare did things at will. At different stages of the first half we would have liked to have made 10, 11 substtiutions, but it’s figuring out where it’s going to be of most improvement.”
Kildare trailed by 12 points going into the final 25 minutes of the game, although they somehow restored a respectful look to the end-of-match scoreboard; 2-16 to 0-17.
Although it could have been a far more dramatic turnaround if Alan Smith and Tommy Moolick had converted late goal opportunities.
“When things improved,” explained Ryan, “it wasn’t a case of one player in particular being awesome, but that as a collective group of the 14 outfield players, they all improved and started to play the game with far more pace.”
“I would say that our players were really shocked with the level of physicality that they encountered.”
“The strength that Kevin Reilly showed in the level of the tackles that he made on Paddy Brophy made a big impact on our forward line. The match ups that Mick O’Dowd made caused us problems and to me that was the big thing.”
Paddy Brophy was substituted early in the first-half after picking up a knock during a collision with Kevin Reilly – or as Jason Ryan puts it, ‘a knockout by Kevin Reilly’.
“Paddy went for low ball and Kevin went through the back of him with his knees and Paddy’s back went into spasm. I’ll look back on it but Gaelic football is a physical sport and you maximize the contacts that you can make.
“As an opposing manager you’d like more of this or more of that and Kevin did get a card in the first half, but he’s a physical player and that’s how he plays.
“For a lot of our young lads it was an eye-opener, the level of physicality that Meath brought, Brian Mention, Shane O’Rourke, Brian Meade; they were all very strong and physical.”
Off-the-back of a 15 point hammering of Louth, the Kildare manager was expecting a similar performance in Croke Park yesterday.
“We felt the Louth performance was a fairly complete performance and today for the first 45 minutes it was a very incomplete performance.
“We could have changed the full-back line, the half-back line, midfield, the half-forward line. Maybe not the full-forward line as much, I thought Podge Fogarty when the opportunities came his way did well.
“Our work rate in that middle section was very disappointing though and so much happens in that middle area that if you allow a team time they are going to do serious damage.
“We conceded 1-4 in nine minutes and for the remainder of the game Meath had only four attacks, so yeah, it was disappointing.”
