Poacher laments mistakes against Wexford but sees bright future for Leitrim
Green & Gold boss stresses that anything is possible if current squad sticks together for a few years
Steven Poacher believes that Leitrim will make a breakthrough in the coming years if the current squad sticks together after Saturday’s Tailteann Cup defeat at the hands of Wexford, the Green & Gold boss lamenting errors he felt cost his team a potential victory in Heartland Credit Union Pairc Sean Mac Diarmada.
Contrasting his side’s experience with that of Wexford, the Leitrim boss stated “If you look at that Wexford group, four years ago John Hegarty took the job and John’s being with that group four years and 24 of their panel are still there, that's a serious retention rate. What we need is now we need this group to stay together and if this group can stay together, anything's possible.”
However, Poacher was the first to admit that the first half performance left Leitrim with a mountain to climb: “The mistakes we made in the first 15, 16, 17 minutes was incredible boys, absolutely incredible! You can prepare all you want - you can look at Brooks' kick-out and you can look at the way they attack; you can look at how they defend and you can look at how we attack and how we defend.
“But when you're just giving simple ball away, it just feeds the opposition energy and it drains you of energy and that's what ultimately happened. In that first half, I think we had 11 turnovers and I think they got nine points from those 11 turnovers so it's tough to take now.”
Poacher also felt that Leitrim had a chance to win the game: “I'm more disappointed today about the fact, yeah we came back in the second half - we did this, did that - but at the same time we could have won that game if we'd have taken out the monumental level of errors that we had.”
Wexford’s intensity and physicality had an effect in the first half but the Leitrim boss still felt that it was more down to Leitrim’s errors than anything spectacular Wexford did: “Wexford are a big side, they are a physical side but I think to be fair we made it easy for them, it wasn't as if we were being ripped and stripped and being tackled with serious ferocity.
“We were giving cheap ball away and when you do that lads at this level you get punished. Wexford are heading to division 2 next year and they'll know about it in division 2 - you go up the ladder and you go up the levels you know all of a sudden when you get turned over you get punished and and we rightly got punished in that first half and just hand them the scores.”
Asked what he had done during halftime to turn Leitrim’s performance around, Steven reiterated that this is still a young Leitrim team learning their way in inter-county football: “From our perspective, obviously we've our own metrics that we're looking to hit and I don't think there was much roaring and screaming or shouting in the changing rooms because those days are sort of past now.
The mistakes we made in the first 15, 16, 17 minutes was incredible boys, absolutely incredible! You can prepare all you want - you can look at Brooks' kick-out and you can look at the way they attack; you can look at how they defend and you can look at how we attack and how we defend. But when you're just giving simple ball away, it just feeds the opposition energy and it drains you of energy and that's what ultimately happened
“Obviously, you do ask questions of them and you've got to remember, we're dealing with a very very young group lads a very inexperienced group, a lot of them in their first year of county football. For me, it's obviously another learning step - they'll learn massive amounts from that, massive massive amounts from it. At halftime, we just looked at what we were doing well - defensively we were actually doing a lot of things well - we looked at what we can improve on and we tried to address it and we did and we got that energy.
“The biggest problem we had in the second half was we just never got the two two-pointers in a row. We just needed the double score and we didn't get it and if we had got the double score, it might have just put a wee bit more squeeze. We always seem to get a score. From our perspective, we obviously have to be pleased with the effort and the performance that we put in during the second half, I think it was 1-12 to 0-6 in the second half so it's an incredible turnaround from a young group.”
Looking back over the season, Poacher lamented the debilitating effect injuries had on Leitrim’s years: “It's incredible the injuries we have and they're not soft tissue injuries or anything we're doing in training, it's bad luck. In the championship against Sligo, Gavin Reynolds, after a year out, getting to the pitch of the game and getting to the level where we wanted him at. Gavin, all of a sudden does his knee with an impact injury. Barry broken bone in his foot, incredible; Tom Prior's impact injury against Wicklow probably missed the whole season.
“You’re talking about Cillian McGloin as well, you're talking about really really top level inter-county players here that we're losing and there's no county in the country that could actually possibly survive with the injuries that we've had this year. I think at one stage we had 11 injured. But it comes back to the whole thing - that's what a panel and a squad is for and today we went deep into it. Tom Plunkett got his first ever championship start, I was delighted for the lad, Ruairi O’Rourke came on a sub there today - the future's bright.”