Antrim had to work a little less hard for their scores says Leitrim manager Jonny Garrity

Leitrim will spend an eighth season in the bottom rung of the Lidl LGFA National League after a suffering 5-9 to 3-10 Division 4 semi-final defeat to Antrim in Kingscourt last Sunday.

In a game, where arguably Leitrim played the better football, mistakes working the ball out from the backline cost the green and gold in vital moments.

"Antrim had to work a little less hard, perhaps, than we did for our scores,” said manager Johnny Garrity after the game. “I think our scores were born of merit, fantastic open football, of line-breaking moves that opened up the defence,” he said, praising his team. When you are doing a hell of a lot of work, hard graft to win the ball back, and you give it away easily and leave yourself exposed like that, it can be demoralising."

Despite going down 2-1 in the first two minutes of the game, Garrity says that he was not worried that his team would find a way back into the game. “That is who they are, and that is the character of the group and the mental strength that is in it. I thought some of our attacking play was just breath-taking today, absolutely brilliant but unfortunately, in our transition at times, in our attacking play at times, we made it a bit easy for them to get their scores … in the end, it was a bridge too far.”

Looking back on the game, Leitrim will rue a lot of simple passing errors from their backline, which resulted in them giving the ball away and ultimately conceding big scores in important moments while struggling to get the ball out of their half at times.

“In the heat of battle, you can’t account for what somebody will do, they are all human, they are all fallible and we as a management make mistakes as well, what we try to stress is that it is not necessarily the mistake it is how you respond to it and we seen today time and again that we responded.”

The defeat brings a difficult league campaign for Leitrim to a close, with them losing four games. Now they are in the peculiar position of staring into their first season in senior football in a decade as All-Ireland Intermediate win last season, meanwhile failing to gain league promotion once again.

A curious challenge, but one Garrity is looking forward to as his team's focus shifts from the league to the Connacht championship and onto the All-Ireland season: “As much as we are a division four team in the League on merit, we are a senior team on merit because we beat the best of the second tier, and now we get the fruits of that labour. We will embrace the challenge, we know it is a huge challenge, but we know that on any given day that forward line is going to hurt any defence of any county in Ireland.”

EXPECTATION WAS THERE FOR SAFFRONS

“When we set out, quite a few people in Antrim had a bit of hope, but the further it went on, it was expectation,” said Michael Devlin, Antrim Ladies manager, after their 5-9 to 3-10 Lidl LGFA NFL Division 4 semi-final win over Leitrim.

Antrim have made the jump straight back to Division 3 football with their win over the green and Gold at the weekend: “We spoke to the girls at the start of the year and we said what our mission was, what we wanted to do. It might take a wee bit of rebuilding,” said Selector Chris Scullion.

 “The girls all bought in. The effort that they put in, week in, week out, it's not a coincidence that they're here today and we got promotion because of the effort that they put in and whatever else. We can't ask for  any more of them.” 

Their Antrim team will face Fermanagh in the Division 4 final on April 13, in Clones. This all-northern final will host two teams with very similar styles of play, aggressive and attack-minded football, the Antrim managers feel it is destined to be a high scoring affair and a great spectacle for neutrals.

“We only won by a point in the last minute, so it should be exciting. They're a good side. They set up the defence quite well. They attack quite well. They've got good players in Blaithin Bogue and Eimear Smith, too, so we'll think about that going ahead as well,“ said Devlin.

“The way Fermanagh play and the way we play, it's, you've got to win. No point in sitting back and letting things happen and saying, I wish I'd done this and done that. Both of us will probably go for it and hopefully make a great game for the spectators.”