If you go onto the sportsfile website you’ll see that they were down in Wexford during the week along with RTÉ to do the pre-championship individual and squad photos for team lineout / programme etc purposes.
You’ll see that Davy has delivered on his promise made at the recent Wexford Supporters Club championship launch night to call up 3-4 young players. I can see Rory O’Connor [tough luck Banty] and Conor Firman (both St Martins) and Pádraig Doyle (Naomh Éanna) pictured anyway.
Awful decision on Waters. Apart from the fact that he didn’t intentionally trip Murphy, Murphy dived as well just to compound matters. Carlow are doing a serious amount of off the ball blocking that’s not being picked up at all.
The black card doesn’t cover tackles above the shoulder so you can get a mere yellow for clotheslining lads in the neck going through on goal. Then inept referees can deem a genuine attempt to play a loose ball out around midfield as a deliberate trip and give lads a black card.
There’s weaknesses in the black card rule but it’s infuriating to see the incompetence of referees adding to it. That Waters incident was like you’d see in soccer with two lads sprinting from different angles towards a loose ball and one of them getting there a split second before the other, toeing it away and getting caught. It’s never a black card. It’s not deliberate.
This will be difficult to win. We don’t have much to come on now and Carlow are getting away with a lot of holding, blocking and stuff.
Not good, guys. We got done over by the referee a little bit but we probably got what we deserved on balance. A lack of strength in depth to cover for Waters and Kehoe and Eoghan Nolan’s red card made it even more of an uphill battle. We actually got two goals from driving it into Carlow’s mass defence to get back level and we were only one down when it became 14 v 14. Some really sloppy kicking and inexplicable decisions in possession late on and Brendan Murphy emphatically finished the breakaway goal in injury time to seal it.
A lot of Wexford people were getting ahead of themselves and talking about hosting the Dubs in Wexford Park and we have to take our medicine now. I would have missed that game anyway due to vacation but I’ll be home a couple of days before we take on Kilkenny at home.
Well that was disappointing. As bandage says, on the balance of things, we didn’t deserve the win. Carlow looked better with the ball and kicked better scores. They had a clear plan on kick outs with Murphy being totally isolated in the middle so it was a case of hitting it long on top of him, and he is going to be good enough to either win it clean or break it favourably to a team mate. The fact we never once tried as a team plan to counteract a very visible tactic was poor. Our play was too stagnant. Slow build up. When we ran at them we either got frees or scores. When we slowed and kept going sideways we got nothing.
It was poor overall though. Didn’t deserve anything out of it.
Special mention to the ref too who was diabolical. The black card to Waters was a farce. Eoin Nolan then getting a red for a free that in itself was debatable, never mind second yellow worthy. PJ got pushed over and then throttled behind the refs back. So he comes running in, brings the ball out and books PJ. His non carding for Carlow players for pretty much the same offences was baffling. PJ was also clearly tripped in the penalty box late on and he just waved play on.