Disrespect fueled Leitrim's fire against Carlow says Mark Diffley

Motivation comes in many different forms for a team but there is nothing quite like feeling you have been disrespected to fire up a team and certainly, Leitrim were fired up for their meeting with Carlow last Saturday, long serving defender Mark Diffley capturing the mood in the camp quite succinctly after the 0-22 to 1-13 victory.

“Call a spade a spade - they were quite disrespectful towards our team at the end of that League game in Carlow,” Mark told the Observer when asked about the clear level of hostility between the two camps during the game, adding “Their manager had a lot of comments to say about us in the papers. He made a comment about Wicklow, that they should enjoy going down to play Waterford and Leitrim next year. Even at the start of the game, they had words to say to us when we were walking around the grass but we knew something was coming and we wanted to put in a performance and we did.”

Steven Poacher’s side were determined to prove a point, not just to Carlow, but to others who had doubted them according to the former Leitrim captain: “Obviously, we weren't happy against Down the way it went. We probably didn't give it enough of a cut but there were things thrown at us during the week. I know people said we were lacking leaders and that we just feared Down and stuff like that. We felt like we let ourselves down in Newry and we wanted to remedy that but there is a steeliness in this panel and it's something that we've tried to get consistently for the last while.

“Looking over the last two months, we felt like we were getting there. Last week, we weren't happy - obviously, we have a massive amount of injuries, I won't even go through all of them but we have a lot of U20s on the pitch and to get game time into them, that steeliness is growing.”

Rectifying what went wrong in Newry was worked on during the week and when the Observer put it to him that it didn’t feel like a 14 point loss, Mark agreed “Neither did we, to be honest. We knew going in that they'd run a three-man game. We kind of took their main men out of it. The difference was in physicality, we just couldn't get hold of the ball last week for 20 minutes but we remedied that today. We worked really hard on the kick-outs all week. It was as Jim McGuinness said; you're working on one thing one week and you get better the next week. That's just what happened here.”

LEITRIM TAILTEANN CUP CLASH WITH WEXFORD FIXED FOR SATURDAY JUNE 6

Reflecting on the Carlow game, Mark admitted that aspects of it were not what Leitrim had envisioned: “I think the boys maybe felt the nerves a little bit to start that first ten minutes. We were up and down in the transition game, almost like basketball, but it's not what our original plan was.

“We settled into the game after that. The boys started to get a stranglehold of the ball towards the end of the second half. But it wasn't a perfect performance - I think we had more turnovers in this game than we had in the first half than we had against Down in total. So it was something that we weren't happy with at halftime. We tried to remedy and get control in the second half - that is the new game, it is all about momentum.”

What particularly impressed was how Leitrim reacted to Carlow’s fortunate goal: “I think I got a block that spun out and they got their goal to get them back in the game. We knew we were going to dig in, we were going to defend, we were going to stick with our structure and once we weathered the storm, we kicked on again.”

And Mark is determined to see Leitrim push on deep into June for championship football: “This is where you want to be. The league is all well and good and we obviously want to be successful in the league but championship football is where it's at at the minute. We want a long run into summer and hopefully, we'll get lads back and roll on to the next game.”