I am very disappointed, they were there for the taking if we had been a little bit smarter, maybe had a little bit more belief. With 10 minutes to go, Kilkenny just seemed to get the scores a little easier. Kilkenny were fairly poor though, pulling forwards out and then just landing the ball on top of Hannon & Richie Mac, made them both into heroes.
In fairness to Richie, he did a good job on Fennelly, shut him down completely. Now the ball in was septic but Richie stick tight to him all day long and swept up well. And it may be easy for a free man like Hannon to look good and he doesn’t particularly like the actual defending side of the game, but he had the aggression and confidence back. Absolutely delighted for him, the one real positive I can take from that is that it looks like he’s enjoying his hurling again.
Forwards didn’t win enough ball, I thought the ball in was a bit better than the Clare game, mostly because Hannon was given so much space. But still some horrific balls from the likes of Casey, who did well defensively, but was the worst of the lot on the ball. Some awful tippy-tappy shite in the forwards too, and a lot of wides.
It was actually a game that would have suited Jim-Bob, lots of congestion and rucks, very little running; he would have revelled in it from the start and did alright when he came on bar a stupid shot. Nash was beaten all ends up by Walsh but I think he should have been moved out to half-forward at that point. Kyle was good first half, quiet second half but Casey did well throughout, some lovely scores. Dowling was beyond woeful in the first half but again, stepped it up in the second, think he scored 2 from play and did work hard.
Kilkenny were never going to let us score a goal in the dying stages, need to hit them early on. Those missed chances in the first half killed us really. Really annoying, because Kilkenny didn’t work as hard as us and played stupid stupid hurling.
Gavin did give them some soft frees. I wouldn’t say it was the losing of the game or anything but there were a few occasions where the Kilkenny forward clearly overcarried and was charging and he’d give them a free. Didn’t give us the same soft ones. Again, that’s annoying.
We gave up a few other handy scores with silly mistakes. I thought we were improved on Clare but Kilkenny, at the same time, didn’t have the attributes to really punish us.
