Coralstownkinnegad devastated by semifinal thrashing

Coralstown/Kinnegad manager Thomas McDonnell was even more disappointed by his side’s display than the result of last Sunday’s Westmeath SFC semi-final against Garrycastle.

His despondent mood was obvious in the immediate aftermath but, to his credit, he still shared his thoughts on the game.

“I know it’s easy to say that they were a lot better than us and all credit to them for the win, they were superb. I think it got to a few of our boys, we haven’t been in a senior semi-final in maybe six years, and we had a lot of young boys out there. We just didn’t get going at all.]

"I certainly don’t think we’re as bad as what we showed out there. We’re devastated, very disappointed, particularly with the way we played; we could have been a lot better than that,” he said.

McDonnell felt the wealth of experience in the Garrycastle ranks was a crucial factor.

“Three years ago we were trying to get out of intermediate football and they were playing in an All-Ireland final. That’s what you’re looking at,” he remarked.

“We’ve played the campaign with a lot of injuries, not making excuses. We’ve three of our best players sitting in the stands today - it’s very hard when you’re going in without Alan Giles, Mark Gorman and Jason Lynch. You need to be at full strength to even a chance to compete with those guys (Garrycastle). That probably came back to haunt us today,” Thomas continued.

“We wanted to start fast but they really caught us with the early goal. Heads dropped a bit and then they got right on top of us. Everyone has that game plan of wanting to get a fast start ... but they really turned the screw on us.”
McDonnell believes his side can still take many positives from their progress this year, and he hopes they can finish the season on a high by securing promotion from Division 2 of the ACFL.

“Unfortunately we’ve lost two championship games this year, both to Garrycastle, but they’re the only competitive games we’ve lost all year. We’re top of our league, we’d like to get back into Division 1.

"We’re also in the Feis Cup semi-finals; I know it’s going to be hard now that the championship is over, a lot of boys drop off. But we’ll keep going, the lads have done as best as they could and we’re proud of them,” he added.