We’ve two weeks to fix it, we’ve no option now, we have to dust ourselves down’
To be fair he comes across as a composed sort of individual no matter what. Even so, we guess he’d had the bones of an hour at that stage to digest what had happened in a fairly disastrous first half of football.
He’d fifteen minutes at half-time to take in the scale of it, the entire second half, and, at least, another fifteen minutes after the full-time whistle to figure out what had just happened.
To be fair to Vinny Corey, he didn’t shy away from it either. He could have clutched at straws and pointed to his side’s improved second-half showing, but what use would that have done? Better to face up to it, front up.
“It was a terrible first half,” the Monaghan manager said straight up.
“We didn’t see that first half coming, it was as bad a first half as we’ve ever had. Two points in a half of football. We had plenty of ball, we just gave it all away, and Kerry punished us.
“We settled into the game early on in the first five minutes, we had a goal chance ourselves, through Conor McCarthy, and if that had gone in, maybe it would have settled us a bit more. It was completely how we used the ball which was the major problem.
“Defensively, we probably did alright on the key men, David Clifford, Paudie Clifford, Seán O’Shea, as well as you could do anyway, but we were just destroyed on turnovers.
“I think the boys were in good enough form coming down but, even if you went out for your first game of the year, you would score more than two points in a half.
“It’s not good enough, and the boys know that themselves. If we had scored in the first half what we scored in the second half, it would have been a tighter game.”
As for the moderately improved second-half showing?
“We’re clutching at straws, but that would be the positive you would take from it,” Corey admitted.
“It could have got ugly, but the boys went out from a tough position at half-time, and they won the second half. We have to go home with that. If you went any worse in the first half of the Louth game, you’d have no scores.
“Two points, it would be hard to beat that for a half of football. You’d like to think we can get a lot better in our use of possession in the two weeks. Kicking a 20 yard pass away, or fisting a 20 yard ball away, they will be disappointed with that.
“We’ve two weeks to fix it, we’ve no option now, we have to dust ourselves down. It could have got a lot uglier in the second half. They had 15 points scored by half-time, and that’s a big score for a half of football, and ten of them from our turnovers.
“Our use of possession was killing us, we had another gilt-edged goal chance at the start of the second half, and maybe we got in behind again for another goal chance.
“You need to take them, we didn’t take them, I don’t think that was the story of the game, but we could have definitely used our possession an awful lot better than we did, and we paid the price. Credit to Kerry, they hardly missed anything at all today.”
The Farney’s injury profile hasn’t been the healthiest this year and, while Corey was able to select a fairly strong side on paper, the fact that Jack McCarron didn’t feature was notable. Indeed, it was something commented upon by Jack O’Connor.
“We’re sort of used to that [injuries] by now, it’s just the way it’s been going,” Corey explained.
“We have to dust ourselves down and get on with it, there are other boys who have to put the hand up, and that’s it. Jack McCarron, Kieran Duffy and Ryan McAnespie are all coming back from hamstring injuries, and just the way the game was going away from us, and the way Dessie Ward came on and came off, it was a decision for us to make, is today the day for us to risk a man coming back from a hamstring injury, or give them another two weeks.
“We decided to give them another two weeks of training. If the game had been tighter, maybe we would have went for it, and taken a risk. It would have only have compounded things, to maybe fire a few fellas on, who were a wee bit undercooked.”
As for how the Kingdom performed, the Farney manager felt the home side went out with a safety-first approach, despite obviously putting up a very big tally.
“They went very defensive,” he said.
“Definitely in the first half they got every man back behind the midfield line, and that contributed to our turnovers as well. The way they set up, you don’t often see Kerry as defensive as that, 14 men behind the ball, so that was obviously something they had worked on, to keep it tight and hit us on the counter-attack.
“We would like to think we could attack a bit better against that, but we didn’t use the ball well. They came with a plan, they were full of intent, and I think they had 17 shots in the first half, and 15 scores.”
Saturday was Monaghan’s eighth straight defeat across league (six games) and championship (two games). Having battled with the big boys at the top table for so long, the Farney are under pressure like never before.
“You can’t beat winning games,” Corey said whistfully.
“I have to credit the group, they’re a great group, we’ve been on a tough road, and the boys always stick together. There’s never been any dissent there, but if you’re losing games consistently, confidence is bound to take a hit.
“There’s only one way out of that, and you have to play your way out of it.”
