Pros and cons for St Mullins and Ballinkillen managers to look back on after Championship cracker
St Mullins manager Tommy Buggy Photo: Pat Ahern
“I can’t sum it up for you,” said winning manager Tommy Buggy after St Mullins beat Ballinkillen in the fourth round of the JJ Kavanagh Senior Hurling Championship last Saturday.
I don’t know what happened. We lacked intensity in the second half especially. I thought our first half display was excellent. It really was. We scored 2-9 from play in the first half. We took our foot off the pedal in the second half. We are not happy with that second half performance. I said that to them. There is a lot of work to do,” explained Tommy Buggy.
Scoring 3-23 is not to be sniffed at. Conceding 4-17 is entirely different.
“Look. We will take the positives from it. We got our win. We are in the semi-final. We made mistakes but they are things you can correct. Things you can work on. The players know that themselves. They are not happy with the display,” agreed Buggy who was glad to see that Marty “Mouse” Kavanagh scored 3-1.
“That is his first game. He hasn’t hurled in six weeks. It was nice to get him back on the field tonight. We have massive improvement and we will improve. If you were watching us tonight, you would not be frightened,” was Buggy’s parting shot.
Stephen Dormer of Ballinkillen was philosophical about the result. Why not? He had watched his side give a performance but they just came up short.
“Four games four weeks in a row, bodies were tired. Dion (Wall) went off injured at half-time. He was carrying a knock from last week. He had a massive game last week against Bagenalstown. The soldier he is he strapped it and did everything he could to get out on to the pitch. He was a massive loss at half-time,” the manager said while recognising how well his side played.
“The boys dug in. We know how formidable the St Mullins forwards are. They have six county players up there. We were at our wits end to hold them.
“The big thing for us is to watch the other results. We were hoping to get the win here tonight but now we are depending on other results. It is a tough one. We are happy. After the Myshall game the first day, we were probably struggling a bit confidence wise but the boys bounced back and hurled well against Mount Leinster Rangers, against Bagenalstown last week and again tonight. They are hurling well. We are just not getting there but nearly there though,” observed the Ballinkillen manager.
