Kildare manager David Herity reacts to heavy defeat against Carlow

Carlow manager Tom Mullally, knows a thing of two about Kildare hurling, him being the successful Naas manager for the last few years and while he admitted after Sunday's game that first game in the Joe McDonagh is important “to try and get momentum and thankfully we (Carlow) came out of the blocks fairly quickly and that certainly helped us on the day.”

Mullally added that he felt that Kildare having played just six days previously was not ideal for them but said he felt that Carlow showed tremendous hunger for the ball right from the throw-in.

In fairness Kildare manager, David Herity said that at last Tuesday night's training session did feel like his team were suffering from a hang-over from that game, in fact the manager said he felt “that Tuesday night was the best training session they had for the entire year; we saw what we had to do against Offaly, we didn't kick-on; when the ball was won anywhere in defence; we just did not kick-on; we didn't power the legs and get out, break tackles and deliver ball to the forwards; again today (against Carlow) in the first half either; we played agaisnt the breeze; we played far too many lateral balls; we invited the pressure on and Carlow simply turned us over; remember they have six outstanding forwards that can kill you on any given day and we got punished for that.”

The manager admitted that is team “did exactly what we did not want to do in that first half, you just have to get out, you have to break the tackles but we didn't do that but having said Carlow's pressure in pushing up obviously led to that and there was also some individual handling errors that was very schematically of certain lads but if you have lethal players like Carlow have they just got the taste for goals and then unfortunately in the second half when we knocked over a few points, I thought for large periods of the second half we played well but then coughed up silly possessions again; free-taking in the first half; hand-passing we got crucified for that and they simply had too much on the score board for us.

Attempting to take some positives from this massive set-back, the former Kilkenny All-Ireland medal winner said “there is still a bit of learning at this level; this is championship hurling; the Joe McDonagh championship you have to learn at this level to keep on to possession and be ruthless as you can and be disciplined when you don't have possession and we just weren't.

“Thankfully” added Herity “the games are coming thick and fast; you can't afford to have hang-overs; we have to heal together as a group and until we all heal together we won't be able to move on; but I don't believe in hang-overs I just we coughed up too many initial errors in particular in that first ten minutes; they capitalised, got on top and when you give Carlow possession like that they are absolutely awesome.”

The manager added that Kildare had four goal chances and we took none of them; they had six opportunities and got five goals.

Looking ahead to Sunday's clash with Offaly Herity said “we have played Offaly in eight days time; a team we have played in over two-and-a-half hours in the last three weeks; we have a massive opportunity.”