“An empty feeling”

“We just didn’t do ourselves justice”

REACTION
Mike Finnerty
Ennis


THE day dawned on Liam Higgins in Ballina on Monday morning. His heart ached with the disappointment but life carried on regardless.
Still, right now, a seven point hammering at the hands of Nemo Rangers has him baffled. He did not see this coming and can’t figure out why it happened.
“I’m very disappointed and there’s an empty feeling,“ he conceded. “We didn’t play, we didn’t perform. We prepared long and hard, did as much indepth study of the opposition as we could, and I felt we were doing okay for the first fifteen minutes. We had won a few breaks, made a few tackles and were well in the game.
“But we were swamped from then on. We dropped back a man against the breeze and tried to hold the fort as best we could. And, I’m not blaming the lads around the middle because they tried as hard as they could, but we weren’t making the big catches that we normally do. There was no decent ball going into the forward line as a result and we just lost our way.”
In many ways the Ballina manager has said it all. His team were over-run by opponents who arrived ready to play the game of their lives. They played like men posessed and the Stephenites couldn’t get to that level, no matter how hard they tried.
“They put us under an awful lot of pressure when we had the ball,” recalled Higgins. “Our half-back line were pressurised coming out and they stopped us getting our kicks in. We couldn’t get quality ball into David Brady and we ended up trapped in our own half. We had to work so hard just to get out of own half.
“The most disappointing thing for me is that you’re left wondering were they that much better than us? We just didn’t do ourselves justice.”
The loss of two-time Mayo News Club Star, Kenny Golden, before the game with a hamstring injury deprived Ballina of a defensive weapon. This was exacerbated when Ger Cafferkey limped off after ten minutes. Replacing such quality is never easy, particularly on a day when Nemo’s forwardline were painting pretty pictures in the sunshine.
“We thought we had good cover but it’s hard to replace the likes of Kenny who was probably our best defender all year. Ger [Cafferkey] had been given a job to do too but was gone after ten minutes. James Masters is a class act and if he gets room he’ll punish you. They had other fellas too that upped their game.”
Soon, Liam Higgins, Paddy Ruane and Martin McGrath will turn their attention to the new season. There are games to be won and titles to defend. All in its own good time.
“To win a county and a Connacht title is not a bad year’s work,” he admitted. “We had fantastic support and we probably let them down too on the day. What we have to do now is knuckle down to the bread and butter football and defend our titles.”