‘Missing golden goal opportunities cost us’ - Collier

LAOIS camogie co-manager Pat Collier was gracious in defeat after seeing his team lose a second successive Leinster Intermediate Championship final in Netwatch Cullen Park.

Wexford toppled his side by a point in last year’s decider and there was late drama again this time around as an injury time goal took victory out of their hands.

Speaking after the game on Saturday Pat said: “We were under no illusions coming here, this Carlow team has been playing in Division 2 and have been hugely competitive in the last three games against Kerry, Derry and Armagh.

“We consider ourselves roughly on that level, but their physicality showed today, I think they bullied us a little bit.

“The difference was that we got two super goal chances and didn’t take them, and that’s why Carlow won by four points,” added the Laois boss.

“Both teams missed a few chances in the first half, but we’re the ones who missed the goal chances and at this level you can’t be missing those chances. Carlow scored 2-9 and when you miss goal chances you’re in trouble.” Laois were missing a couple of players due to varying circumstances and Collier and his fellow co-manager Rob Jones were also down a few players from the team that reached three finals in 2024, but Collier wasn’t going to use it as an excuse.

“We’ve known early in the year that certain players wouldn’t be coming back and we’ve built a good panel and team again,” he said.

“We had a few girls way or injured today which was a big loss to us, but there’s no complaints from me – Carlow were very good and very solid.

“They’re well coached and we just weren’t good enough.” The goal that ultimately won the game for Carlow came from a long range free that was driven into the danger zone and found its way into the back of the net as the sun blazed down on the players awaiting its arrival, and Collier said: “It deflected off one of our girl’s hurls and into the net, but that’s the luck you get in sport.

“Against Roscommon in the league final we maybe got a bit of luck, we were lucky enough to win that game by five we probably should have won by one or two.

“I’m not going to complain about those things, we tried hard and we worked hard, we prepared well for this day.

“Coming down here I knew a lot of these Carlow girls from college as my daughter hurls with them and I kept telling the girls these will stick with ye, they’ll be there at the end.

Fair play to Carlow and best of luck to them going forward.” The All-Ireland Series now awaits this team and that’s what Collier has always been striving for.

“This year we changed our training program, we actually focused on the league first and we did all gym sessions. With the Leinster Championship we said we’d have a go, but the big one for me is the All-Ireland.

“We have a lot of training to do going forward for this All-Ireland series and that’s the one we’re after and we’re going to give that a good rattle,” he concluded.