Burke retained confidence in his team even during slow start
Sara Doyle celebrates scoring Carlow's third goal in the second half against Limerick. Photos: Pat Ahern.
The Carlow manager was in relaxed form after this one. There have been times where he would be animated and would chat about where it was going wrong for his side. This time, despite going five points down in the opening five minutes, Ed Burke said he was not concerned. Worried was never an emotion for him on Sunday.
“No, surprisingly and you know me, I said to the girls after the game that the biggest compliment I can give is that when you went 1-3 to 0-1 behind, I was not worried,” explained Burke.
“The way we have been playing nothing has fazed us. That was their purple patch. Our purple patch would come and it did come very quickly. We have been around long enough to know that a few years ago if we had gone a point down you wouldn’t have seen us,” he recalled.
He pointed out that no side will ever dominate for an hour and he felt his players also took this approach.
“Now we know we were going to have our patch and we had for 45 minutes. It just happened that the first ten minutes was not our patch. We say that if we go a goal down or a goal up we play the same way. I think our press on the kick-out worked. We got our first goal off it.” He hinted that he was a little anxious before the game.
“It is the first round of the championship. We won the league. We always say after you win a trophy this game was the worrying one.” He need not have wondered.
“We came in and won. We have Sligo in two weeks-time at home here and if we can get a win there it will be the hardest game in the group and that will be the one which will top the table,” Burke predicted.
And was there anything which displeased him?
“There is loads but nothing that I am worried about. How many mistakes did we make today? Loads. Dropped balls, fumbles. Everything. Kicked wides but as I say to them as long as they work hard and that is one thing they do. They work like Trojans. There are things we have to work on. We did execute our plan well. Within the plan we made mistakes , overall, you take out the first five minutes and we were confident we could get the win.”
