St Oliver Plunkett’s work ethic impresses McKenna

It was his side's impressive work rate that really impressed winning St Oliver Plunkett's manager, Ciaran McKenna, in Saturday's Westmeath senior 'B' hurling final.

He said they had focused on tackling and on ensuring possession was not slipped on to loose players, something which had been happening in previous rounds.

Players such as Cathal Craig, Greg Gavin and John Fry were among those to impress in this regard.

"That was one of the things we targeted.

“We have probably been making mistakes in the last couple of games in that we were committing bodies to the tackle, but we were letting people out of the tackle. That was causing us trouble because they were picking out the free men, so we put a big focus on that in the last couple of weeks and we just said if we are committing bodies to the tackle nobody gets out and that was the way we played it," observed McKenna.

"Cathal Craig had a phenomenal game. Two years ago, Cathal couldn’t play because he had a bad injury in the quarter-final when we won Intermediate.

“It was a big one for him today and he had a phenomenal game. Mark Cunningham is a serious hurler and Cathal did his job and a bit more on him."

The victors managed to score two crucial first half goals, but it could have been even better for them.

"I think we had we had five shots and we had two fumbles on the way into shots as well, but the two best goalkeepers in the county are on display here today between Pat and Conor Lynch. Pat pulled off some serious saves there to keep them in the game," noted McKenna.

"We thought if we just kept going at it and kept making the runs and taking shots we could get another couple, but it didn't pay off, it didn't work out in the second half, but we still got our scores. Every time we attacked, we got something out of it."

It was the hard work done all during the year that stood to the new champions at different stages and Ringtown just couldn't match them on the day.

"We've done a lot of work. There were some lads in with the county who were getting serious work and then the rest of us probably started back in the last week of January, maybe a bit earlier.

“We were doing boxing with Davy Oliver Joyce and running with Timmy Murphy," the manager revealed.

"We were in NGS.

“We had done a lot of work before the championship ever got going. We were building through the league, we were building nicely, we were seeing patches of performance and coming out of every game, even though we got beaten in some games, we were seeing very definite things that we could work on and pull together and eventually they came together in one nice little piece there today."