Camogie: ‘We were punished for every mistake,’ says Greville

“I’m disappointed for the girls. Today was no reflection of our ability after what we did last week (beating Limerick). We were punished for every mistake there.”

This initial post-match reaction of Westmeath camogie manager Johnny Greville neatly encapsulated the chastening hour he and his management team had just endured in their All-Ireland senior camogie championship clash at a crowd-less Callan yesterday afternoon.

The Raharney man said of Westmeath’s 6-23 to 1-7 defeat: “We got off to a great start with a great score (Ava Balfe’s point after 12 seconds). It was a great movement and a great start, but with six minutes gone we had conceded three goals

“We talked about coming up from the intermediate to learn, and you’re not going to learn any more than that today.

“Kilkenny have serious players. Their ability around the breaking ball and playing off the shoulder – they are the type of things we have to learn from and bring into our own game ahead of the match against Waterford.

“We were very disappointed with our scoring today because we have a serious forward line, players who are well capable of getting scores from anywhere on the pitch.

“We didn’t get our shots off today, but that’s a testament to Kilkenny’s work rate in the middle third. They dominated between the two ‘45s’. We have to look at that for the next day.

“Against Limerick, we were winning our own puck-outs and some of their puck-outs. We were getting on the ball and that was giving us a platform to attack. If you don’t have the ball, there is very little you can do going forward,” he added.

When it was put to the losing bainisteoir that “purists of the game would applaud his adventurous approach”, he replied, initially in a jovial manner: “We decided not to play with two sweepers and two sheets of plywood in defence!

“We wanted to showcase what we have done over the past four years. I thought our full back line was brilliant, especially in the second half. In attack, Megan (Dowdall) caused them a few problems at the end, while (his sister) Pamela (Greville) should have tucked away the penalty to take the bad look off the scoreline.

“We’re disappointed overall as we came down here today thinking we had a good chance.

“We have Waterford now on November 8. They put in a serious performance against Kilkenny and just fell away at the end. So we know we’re going to get nothing easy against them. We’ll see what happens when they come to Mullingar,” he concluded.

– Gerry Buckley