Manager Ryan pleased with performance of depleted side
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KEVIN RYAN, the Carlow manager, was philosophical after his sides nine point defeat. 'I was conscious before the game that considering their head-start with preparation and the strength in depth of their panel that NUIG, in a a worse-case scenario, could put four or five goals on us, give us a bit of a trimming,' revealed the Waterford man, beginning his second year in charge.
'That that didn't happen is down to the fighting spirit of the lads, who were, as expected, very committed but obviously their hurling was not as sharp as we hope it will be later in the year,' stated Ryan.
'The frees, of course, were crucial, they scored virtually everything, we missed a lot but as I said to the lads that goes to show what we have to do to bridge the gap, every little thing counts, you have to take your chances and same at the other end, you can't afford to concede frees, you will be punished every time,' said Kevin.
'Due to various reasons, including college tied players such as Shane (Kavanagh) and Dessie (Shaw), we had only half our Ring Cup winning team out there to-day but saying that I was happy that Eoin Nolan did well on his return and that David English and Brian Doyle, making their debuts, did well,' signed off the manager whose next competitive outing will be a Shield quarterfinal aganst the losers of next Sunday's Wexford v Antrim match.
'To-day we got a taste of things to come. You can go either way now, throw in the towel before it starts or embrace the challenges ahead and develop our hurling to try and match the quality of teams we are coming up against. Knowing the bunch of guys in the panel, I'm sure it's the latter.'
The defiant words of Eddie Coady, Carlow's captain last Sunday as the county made their first appearance in Leinster's tier one subsidiary competition in 47 years.
'The main difference to-day was that they were a bit sharper and converted most of their chances, especially from placed balls.
'There are three issues we can work on and improve easily enough, our first touch, cut down the free count and convert our placed balls,' pointed out the skipper for the day, the 2008 captain, like Damien Roberts, is beginning a third decade on the inter-county beat.
