Longford boss Noonan says consistency is key

Longford manager Brian Noonan has emphasised that his side must gain consistency to follow up his sides victory over Kildare yesterday.

Speaking on the LGFA Official Live Streaming Service, Noonan showed his pleasure with beating a side like Kildare but understands that now is the time to string wins together.

“Yeah, it was a super win! I think it was six points at the end? It didn’t feel like it, it felt like we were hanging on.

“But yeah, I love to come to Newbridge and turn over the Leinster Champions, we’re absolutely delighted with it, but I just said to the girls that we did something similar last year where we took out the All Ireland favourites (Westmeath) and we didn’t back it up and we ended up in a relegation playoff.

“We certainly can’t afford to let that happen again so we’ll be taking ourselves down off the high fairly quickly and getting back to business from tomorrow morning onwards.”

As a matter of fact, inconsistency is all that is separating his side from going toe to toe with sides like Kildare on a regular basis.

“Inconsistency kills us. You can see from a performance like today that we’re fit to match it with the top teams.

“Kildare are the Leinster champions and they’re being heavily tipped to win an All Ireland and we mixed it with them there today and we got our win. But we just have to back it up.

“Hopefully it’ll go in our favour that we have the bye next weekend to give us a week to reset. We’ve a two week gap before the Roscommon game to be ready to hit the ground running because it was a tough game there today.”

On the key to victory yesterday, Noonan believes that simply an all round great team performance saw his side over the line.

“Work rate was massive and it’s been something that we’ve really really talked about and focused on in the last few weeks. If you outwork the opposition you give yourself a serious chance of beating anybody.

“I suppose we got early scores, we built up a lead early on to give ourselves a platform. With Kildare getting the goal before halftime that really gave them a lifeline but you know, Clonagh (Lohan) hit them for a goal then again in the second half and and you know, we just kicked on from there.

“We had the belief and the grit between our teeth and this group are really really hungry to push on and and show what they can do.”

Longford beat Kildare by a score of 3-9 to 1-9. Lohan scored 2-2 whilst Michelle Farrell scored 1-4 for the visitors. Their other points came courtesy of Louise Monaghan, Sarah Shannon and Katie Crawford.

Gillian Wheeler meanwhile grabbed Kildare’s goal, with their points coming from Aoife Rattigan (0-3), Grace Clifford (0-2), Lara Curran (0-3) and Lara Gilbert (0-1).

This was the first game in Group C of this years intermediate All Ireland. Kildare face Roscommon next week, whilst Longford face the Rossies the week after.

Formerly DCU Journalism, covering mainly Athlone teams for finalwhistle.ie

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