Louth and Proud: Dublin O'Byrning Positives

Dublin like I said last week makes us change and those were negative reasons.....I think now we can use them to change positively going forward....

Difference between the two sides was wholly evident in the first few minutes as they nearly scored a goal on their first attack.They were able to think and react quicker to situations, making decisions split seconds faster than we were.

Exposing ourselves to that speed and intensity is brilliant PREPARATION for the upcoming league. It sets the standard of where we now need to be.

Under pressure, fitness levels has gotten us this far but when we met a team like Dublin, who have that core fitness built up in them over a longer period of time.
we are in year one they are in year 5 at this stage.
When a team equals our fitness levels we now need to be able to equal their skill level. Now that our fitness levels has improved, our skills and speed of thought will improve also.

Bottom Line, without PK our midfield struggles and this was the case again yesterday. We need to have a better contingency plan...... our kick-outs did not give our midfield a chance to create a platform or to at least contest. Putting our half back/forward lines on the back foot as a result. Case in point Jack mcCaffery who got forward time after time on the back of our naive kickouts and basically kicking into Dublin midfields hands.

Learn, We know more about ourselves now after this one, 70 minute game than the past 3 games and multiple training sessions beforehand. We need to learn from this loss otherwise we will continue to make the same mistakes again.

in two weeks time, we start the league campaign. For that Westmeath game I have 5 definite starters So plenty of competition that I will go through by the end of the week. This Dublin game has given the management, squad and fans a dose of well needed reality too, we can go away and work hard on the training ground and just focus now on getting a vitally good start to the league.

New Recruits, John Bingham has really shone at corner back since his Debut in Navan, really hasn't put a foot wrong and that consistency was even seen yesterday.
Sean McCann made a subtle impact on the wing and grew as the game went on.
Paddy Sheelan the left footer from Cooley also made a nice debut.

Then there was 4 other rookies who were exposed to the Dubs level with varying results Ruairi Moore and Bernard Mulligan were substituted, The Two O'Connor's lasted the full match. How those Rookies choose to react and learn from their performance will determine how well they progress. Either way they now know where they need to be at to make it.