Duff just could not hide his delight and satisfaction at a job well done

Comment 

LAOIS manager Stephen Duff was in a great mood at 3.30pm on Sunday after his side recorded their third win in succession in Division 3, this time against Offaly in Bracknagh.

“Definitely happy. Results are results and you have to be taking them but from where we were last year it's definitely positive to be getting results on the way. Three in a row is brilliant for the girls, just constantly growing our confidence. Parts of our performance weren’t great in the second-half,” Duff said.

The weather conditions were atrocious in Bracknagh on Sunday with both sides unusually playing well against the wind. The rain also came down in buckets so it made for a sloppy game as a spectator.

“Obviously, the conditions didn't make for a nice game with a lot of hand passes, passes to the ground, kick passes were carried a bit too far with that wind so that was a bit frustrating in that regard, but it was both the same for both teams. It would have been nice to kick out a couple more scores because there was a lot more scoring chances there that were left behind us but overall, very positive.

“I think both teams played better against the wind. I think it was a very strong wind to be playing against. The ball was carrying, look at the amount of ball that Offaly put in the first half that carried out over the end line as well and we did the same thing, so it wasn't an easy situation to be playing against. You'd usually think that playing against the wind would help but it was just a swirling wind, it was so strong that there was no real reading. We managed the situation the best we can. Did we leave a lot of scores behind us? Yes, we probably did but it was a positive situation. If you’d have said to me after the Louth game that we'd win the next three in a row, I’d have bitten your hand off,” he said.

The only blemish on Laois’ record in this year’s Division 3 campaign was the loss to Louth which saw them ship six goals in Crettyard at the beginning of February. Duff says that not much has changed since then and that Louth just caught them off guard on the day.

“Not a huge amount has changed. We were caught on the hop from Louth. There's no two ways about it; we were definitely caught on the hop, but it just gave the girls a little bit of confidence and they bought into what we're trying to do. We're trying to press high and get a large amount of tackles up the pitch and turnovers up the pitch. In the first half, I think it was evident that we were getting that. A lot of teams in their full-back line wouldn't be confident to hold the ball in possession so we're trying to give them that opportunity and let them make a bad decision.

“Then we’re able to get the turnovers up the pitch because you have players like Fiona Dooley and Eva Galvin and Andrea Moran and players who are running down their neck, it's very hard to stop. We saw evidence of that against Carlow and we saw evidence of that today and it's just trying to pull that together to be more consistent but that's fine. We're still in February; there's no All-Ireland’s won in February so we're trying to build our process as I've been saying for the last couple of weeks and we're getting there. But yeah, a different team than what we saw against Louth, we were just caught with our pants down and need to be better,” Duff said.

Duff was also able to recall Katie Donoghue and Eimear Barry into his starting 15 with the manager defending Naomi Luttrell for her performances in recent weeks and that all the faults can’t be put on her.

Their returns were a massive boost. It's just strength and depth that we're trying to build. I think Naomi's come under an awful lot of flak the last couple of weeks for the amount of goals that's been conceded and that's not all her fault. A lot of parts of our process weren't working so Eimear comes in now, she's getting her chance and probably Ava will get a chance over the next couple of weeks as well. We've got three really strong goalkeepers and we're really happy to have that.

“Katie Donoghue who has been frustrated the last couple of weeks with an injury in her quad. Delighted to have her back on the pitch, she's such a smart footballer for her age. She can play on the half-forward line or the inside line as we saw at the end when she got her goal. But she's such a smart footballer in Ladies Football, she has this skill of just being able to read the game and be in the right place at the right time so well. But I'm delighted to get her back on the pitch, and I'm delighted to see her smile and that she's enjoying her football again,” he added.

The one frustrating thing for Duff and his players is that they’re struggling to get a pitch to play their upcoming game against Limerick this weekend. Laois are due to be at home, but Duff admits that they may have to play it outside of the O’Moore County.

“We don't really know because we don't know where we’re playing the game yet; we can't get a pitch. It's a bit frustrating that we can't seem to play the game anywhere. We might have to go outside the county to play the game, so we'll see how that fares out over the next couple of days. We’re not too concerned about Limerick; we just want to improve on what we improved on today. The big improvement we want to see is a bit more handling, reduce the number of turnovers and the pass completion rate, get that up. As I said to you last week, we're just trying to pick things from last week's performance, bring them into next week's performance. We'll do the same this week. Limerick will be decent enough, they'll be good. If we drop to anyone's level like we saw against Louth, anyone can beat us, so it's up to us to push our performance levels higher,” Duff ended.