'We could have done with a bit of training on the beach' - Kildare boss has his say on St Conleth's Park pitch

Kildare manager Brian Dowling was asked about the visibly poor condition of the Cedral St Conleth's Park pitch after his side's Leinster Senior Hurling Championship opener with Wexford on Saturday. 

“We could have done with a bit of training on the beach when we were in Portugal for a bit more practice,” Dowling smirked. “Look, it is what it is. The sideline (pucks) lads were taking it from 10 yards in but it was the same for both teams. Obviously, you want a bit more grass on this side of the pitch but we love playing here. We have a great atmosphere. Brilliant to see such a big crowd here. All the players out there with all their supporters. Obviously, we're very disappointed we didn't win, but we're very proud of the lads.”

The Lilies came up short by eight points in a battling display which saw the visitors pull clear in the final 10 minutes of action after a competitive clash.

Dowling said, “I suppose right now, I’m just disappointed. We came here to get the two points, so we will look back at it. Yeah, just disappointed we didn't win, that's what we wanted to do. At this level, you're playing top teams week in, week out, and we got punished there for some errors. But look, we can't fault the lads, the effort they gave the whole way through was immense. We just came up short at the end, unfortunately.

“Yeah, we won the shot count at half-time with 19-17 in our favour. We probably needed to be three or four up. Jack got a brilliant goal there close to half-time. Somewhere point-taking probably wasn't where we're normally at. We're normally very good. So that was definitely a big area that we left behind that first half. The second half performance probably wasn't as good as that first half. But look, there's a lot of positives there as well. These lads have come a long road there in the last couple of years. We'll stay driving now for the next couple of weeks.”

READ FULL REPORT: 'Immensely soft' frees help Wexford beat game Kildare side in Leinster Championship opener

After the usual, open-ended first inquiry on the manager’s thoughts on the game. Attention quickly turned to the man in the middle.

Dowling answered, “Obviously I can’t say anything on the sideline but I was very frustrated. I thought some of them (frees) were immensely soft. At the other end, I thought we could have had a couple of frees but we didn’t get them. Hurling is a physical game, we all want to see it. You’ll see tomorrow, the Munster Championship lads will do whatever they want to each other. It’s not something you want (to be pulled up). The referee wasn’t like that today and I just thought some of the frees were a little bit on the soft side.

“We were saying to our backs to get up tight and get close to the man. I thought we did that brilliantly a couple of times. It’s just very frustrating to see the hand going up for a free. We'll have to look back on it and see if our tackling needs to improve. From the sideline, I'm just a bit frustrated with some of the frees that we're given.”

However they arrived, those Wexford set-pieces needed to be answered and were not often enough by Kildare who grafted brilliantly to turn over possession and carve out chances but failed to take them on too many occasions to keep up the visitors down the home stretch.

“That's something we definitely have to improve on. At this level, you have to keep that scoreboard ticking over. We probably didn't score enough in that second half. Look, at this level, I think we scored 1-14 or whatever at the end. We have to get higher than that if we want to win these matches. That's something we have to work on and try to build on for the Dublin game now,” Dowling said.

“We'll just have to keep building on it now for the next couple of weeks. Results elsewhere, I think Offaly got a draw there against Dublin this evening as well. It just emphasises the importance of turning these good performances into results somewhere along the line. We said before the match, we said it at half-time, we're not here for moral victories. We're up at this level and we have to get points on the board. We don't want to be here for one year and then we're going back down to the Joe McDonagh. We stay fighting for everything we have. We'll do that in every single game. I know the character that's in these lads.”