The Spirit

At this stage, It could have been easy to throw in the towel.

It wasn't as if the lads hadn't an abundance of excuses!

 

but to their credit they didn't.

 

In fact, Losing two men really amped up our intensity and possession.

 

We had to soak up enormous pressure and then break forward in numbers when we attacked.

Ray Finnegan single-handedly drove forward and seemed to take on the whole Westmeath team, he held the ball up and just when you thought he was going to be dispossessed, he kicked the ball across field to find none other than his Brother Dessie!! He was then fouled on the 21 yard line in front of goals.

 

That highlighted how stretched and frantic the game was becoming!

 

Jim McEnaney tapped over the free....1 in it 

 

Like a wounded boxer in the latter rounds of a fight we had to take breathers before we hit back with a flurry of our own.

 

We lay on the ropes as Glennon scored from play and Ger Egan, popped up in same area again! to put 3 between the sides.

Egan seemed to ghost into the game whenever we lost concentration the most, he contributed very little to the general play.

It was backs to the wall stuff and We battled terrifically, working as a whole unit to defend and pushing them back out the field.

Before unleashing a flurry of our own.

Derek Crilly now playing in an advanced position collected an Adrian Reid ball and turned to kick it over.

Ray kicked a great score as precision placed on the lads to get an accurate forward pass had to be perfect.

We seemed to revel under the pressure of keeping precious possession and had Westmeath really questioning themselves and for our efforts we worked a Score  and on 25 minutes Jim levelled!!

 

The voice was well hoarse at this stage too which also poses a question...maybe if we as Fans roared them on with encouragement our intensity could help the lads with their intensity?
Maybe it's a little chicken and the egg situation as there was a number of factors to be taken account for, away from home, knockout, their was more on the line and the lads were playing out of their skins and we felt compelled to shout.

 

Ah well, I'll go to the throat gym and work on my shouting game over the off season just in case.