Dowdall immensely proud as St Loman’s bow out of Leinster

Westmeath champions St Loman’s, Mullingar saw their Leinster dreams dashed by a tenacious and classy Naas outfit at TEG Cusack Park on Sunday.

The saints were outscored from the 39th minute on and the Kildare outfit eventually won through with five points to spare after extra-time, in what was an intriguing encounter. Manager Paddy Dowdall, who was immensely proud of the players’ performance, reflected on a great goal chance in the first half when St Loman’s were three points clear. It came after a sublime pass from Ronan O’Toole carved open the Naas defence, but Sam McCartan’s fisted effort was saved.

“It was so close. Sam (McCartan) did brilliantly to get himself into that position in the first place and these are just the fine margins. If we scored a goal then, it would have put a lot more pressure on them to have to push on in the second half. It would also have given us more opportunities to get up the field and get a score,” mused Dowdall.

“We were still happy at half-time - we thought we would push on, but ultimately that wasn’t the case.”

A superb goal from Shane Dempsey had put St Loman’s in a great position, but their lead was just three points at the break having played with the strong breeze. Naas recovered to force extra-time and the outstanding Darragh Kirwan bagged what proved the winning goal.

“It was just a moment of class from Kirwan, I felt. Defensively, we had been doing really well and for us that was probably the moment: we finished out the first half of extra-time really well and started the second period well. We just probably didn’t get the scores on the board straight away,” observed Dowdall.

“Naas are a seasoned outfit: they were in the Leinster final last year, losing to Kilmacud Crokes, so they have experience.”

The loss of David Whelan with an ankle injury proved a big blow also.

“David Whelan was a big loss to us. In fairness we had Kelvin (Reilly) to come in and fill in and he did a fantastic job. Whelo (David Whelan) has been a driving force for us all year. It was just such a big loss for us and we were bringing in a sub maybe a little bit earlier than we wanted,” said Dowdall.

“The ground was very soft and it was very hard going. The two teams were in great shape, physically, and they were up and down the pitch from the start. It made for a great game: the pace and power in both teams was terrific.”

Fine margins determine everything at the highest level and St Loman’s talisman John Heslin felt he scored a point from an acute angle late on in normal time, but the umpires weren't convinced and decided the shot was wide. Difficult frees in extra-time were off target, but Dowdall felt the game was up at that stage.

“In normal time John stuck all of the frees over. We were down by four points in extra-time when he missed those two difficult frees. I can’t fault the players, they were fantastic,” he said.

“Naas have some really strong players in Darragh Kirwan and Eoin Doyle, for example. Paddy McDermott and Brian Byrne are very strong defenders. But there were small moments in the game that probably Naas did the right things at the right time. Hopefully, that is just growing pains for this team.

“The turnovers in the second half of normal time hurt us. We got good field position two or three times, but the final pass just wasn’t there. In other games, we would probably take that ball and put it over the bar, but not today,” added Dowdall.