GAELIC GAMES:AT 3.56pm yesterday Jason Ryan understandably needed to be some place else.
Dublin and Kildare were about to go at it and the young Wexford manager was keen to find a pitch-side view of the skirmish in order to begin preparations for the Leinster football final on July 10th.
We convinced him to stall for a moment, mainly to remind him of the jarring 23-point collapse against Dublin in the Leinster final of 2008, his first year as an intercounty manager.
“This is different. In 2008 we were just delighted to be there. And, look it, we are delighted to be there again. No doubt about it that Dublin or Kildare are going to be the favourites. We’ll give it a good go.”
This was eventually a comfortable victory over a limited Carlow. It had finished long before the 70th minute and Ryan knew this, having withdrawn his two yellow-carded midfielders, Rory Quinlivan and Daithí Waters, while their running man Colm Morris was afforded a departing ovation on 66 minutes. So too the strangely-subdued Redmond Barry even earlier.
“After our previous two games in Leinster a lot of the comments were that we were playing great football, the lads are exciting to watch . . . but today was shocking. At times we were really poor. We are just delighted to get a win, score a few goals.”
Carlow manager Luke Dempsey had a plan but the concession of a second goal in first-half injury-time sucked too much energy out of them.
“It was an absolute killer. I’d been so happy with how we’d played in the first half, but a goal like that inflates your opponents and deflates your own team.”
