Flanagan unhappy with Kildare's shooting efficiency

As Brian Flanagan emerged into a back alley at Cusack Park members of his backroom team were packing away a few surplus bags of ice. Presumably those weren’t earmarked for the champagne which was now well and truly on hold after a defeat that imperils Kildare’s previously smooth promotion push.

Flanagan was magnanimous, acknowledging that Clare “were deserving winners in the end.” 

“They brought a real bite; they brought a real tenacity to everything they did today and they hit the ground running here whereas we were probably flat in the first half and left ourselves a bit of a hill to climb.” 

Despite a patchy performance from his side, he still felt they might have won it.

“I thought in fairness to the boys they did everything in their power to wrestle that game back on a day when we didn’t ever quite get into our flow, or there was never really a sense we were in our rhythm and things were happening off the cuff. It was very much an arm-wrestle from start to finish for us but ultimately it’s a game we should have won. You know you’re a couple of minutes from the final whistle and you have that advantage, and you really should be seeing it out. Maybe that’s part of the development, part of learning but days like today are part of that but they are tough, and we’ll just have to take stock and get ready again in two weeks.” 

Flanagan identified shooting efficiency, or rather the lack of it, as another critical factor in their downfall.

“The lads brought great energy and fight and want in that second half. But we were off it and I’m after seeing that we’d 39 shots in the game and that’s enough to win three matches probably. But it wasn’t to be today and it’s a tough lesson for us but we will take the lessons on board and come again.” 

We had discussed a lack of goal chances in the last few weeks but there were plenty here, just none of them taken. That was frustrating and deflating.

“It (a goal) would have been a real energy surge for us, for the crowd, for everybody, just to kind of give you that breathing space, but we never got it. We were kicking into bodies, we were fumbling at the last chance, they were getting blocked and particularly in the first half I felt we had two or three chances where a little bit cleaner execution with the final pass or the final shot and you might have got something more out of it, but just a day when loads of chances went abegging and probably that composure up top let us down.” 

Flanagan wasn’t blaming referee Brendan Griffin for the defeat, but he did feel there was a foul against his team in the run up to the late sideline awarded to Clare.

“I definitely thought in that passage of play, given what the referee was blowing for throughout the match and there was a very similar incident in the first half that he did blow for, we didn’t get that. But ultimately it’s probably more an excuse than anything else, we’d enough of chances in our own remit to win that game and we didn’t.” 

We wondered at the half-time replacement of a midfielder (Cathal Hagney) with a defender (Harry O’Neill) when facing a six-point deficit.

“The thinking there was Cathal took a bang just before half-time so he wasn’t able to go out for the second half and we felt Brian McNamara was causing us problems in midfield for Clare,” said the Kildare manager.

“He’d a very strong first half so we pushed Hylo up who’s well able to play midfield and we got Harry into the game who’s been biting at the bit for the last couple of weeks to get back in. We had already used a forward sub in the first half, Brian McLoughlin had gone in and Darragh Swords came off and we knew we’d need two or three more to come in in the second half. Jimmy (Hyland) entered the fray after ten minutes then.” 

On the injury front it seems doubtful that Darragh Kirwan or Kevin Flynn will return to the starting line-up for Offaly, while Shane Farrell is still working his way back. Ryan Houlihan too remains in sickbay with a quad injury.

“I’m not sure if they (Kirwan and Flynn) will be ready in the next two weeks, it will be tight for them,” he told us.

“They’re coming back from hamstring injuries; there’s two or three of them on a very similar timeline. We’ll see how it goes but they’ll be very close to being a part of things in two weeks. Shane, it’s just one that you have to give time, it’s very hard to put a timeline on it because it’s a very tender area. He was in a boot for two weeks after the injection and now he’s starting into a course of rehab for the next couple of weeks. We’ll see how that pans out for him. It’s probably coming up on seven months now at this stage (since he played any football).” 

In better news Flanagan confirmed that “Paddy (McDermott)’s back fully fit the last couple of weeks, played the last few games for Maynooth Sigerson and has been training very well in the last few weeks so he’ll certainly be pushing hard in the next two weeks.” 

We’ll certainly need all hands on deck in a fortnight in O’Connor Park with a win essential to put promotion hopes back on track.