As ye have said, a win is a win. Especially without Gearoid, and losing Gerry Smith just before throw in. That was a brutal day of weather, that wind swirled, and was hard to gauge, and sapped the energy out of lads. That pitch was in poor state too, and that added in to making the going tough, while Leitrim looked good and were well up for this derby - they'll get a nice few wins this year. We judged the 1st half well, playing into that wind. We wasted a lot of time to kill the clock, took a lot out of them, and picked off a few nice points. Galligan took a few frees to figure out that wind, but when he did he was fit to put over a few lovely ones. One free in particular looked well wide before making a sudden sharp turn and to glide inside the post. Great going.
It is a pity we didn't drive on the 2nd half, even if we did enough to win decently. We let them back in there in spurts, and they were level at one point 10 mins into the 2nd half before we pushed on. Had a goal chance when Conor Smith fisted over the bar. But that was it. We need to create more goal chances, especially in this division. It should be an opportunity we look at to get more goals so we get experience to certain lads as it's something we've been poor on. As someone said above, we'll be caught some day if we don't get ahead with goals and kill games.
Paddy Lynch looks to be the real deal. He's growing into himself, and gaining the confidence he needs. He scored some lovely points for those conditions yesterday. Hope he just keeps pushing on and becomes the scoring forward we need him to be. Cormac O'Reilly was busy and did well too. Jason McLoughlin, what can you say about him that hasn't been said already. Such energy, and always there to attack forward and be an option. There were some below par performances from some experienced heads too though. Some a little off fitness (that'll come) and some just made a few too many mistakes. The conditions didn't help, and the pitch was very heavy, but we still dropped a lot of balls, couldn't get the ball off the ground, poor passes, and ran into trouble a few times. Hopefully that's just the first day out in those conditions, and when we get back to Breffni next week we'll nudge it up again.
Anyway, overall good to see out that win with all taken into account. Even playing below par we had more than enough. Get a few more lads back next week and move on from there.