'We're over the first hurdle'

THE GREAT thing about a manager like John McIntyre is that given his vast experience in the media he not only answers every question with ease, but predicts them too.

It will be next Sunday before Galway find out who’ll they’ll play in the Leinster semi-final, but word on the street is that they’ll be kept apart from Kilkenny – thus creating a final showdown to put the “ooh” back into Leinster hurling.

“I knew that question would be coming,” said McIntyre. “We always have the conspiracy theorists out there, who love the bit of controversy. But whoever we have to play we have to play, that’s the bottom line. Picking and choosing doesn’t work at this level, because whoever comes down the tracks, we’ll have to be ready for.”

They look ready enough, although McIntyre was never going to admit that: “We need to kick on, and we do need to improve significantly from what we produced here,” he added.

“We did what we had to do on the day. It was important to us to experience some familiarity with playing in Leinster. Because we didn’t know what was coming down the tracks. Laois really put it up to us the first 20 minutes, didn’t stand on ceremony.

“But we’re over the first hurdle. Job accomplished. Nothing more, nothing less. Our entire focus was on this game but we have to make sure we bring out the necessary improvement in the next three weeks before we can talk about winning that match.”

Yet even McIntyre had a hard time denying he had potential match winners in Damien Hayes, Joe Canning and Niall Healy: “They were okay, but you have to consider as well what they were up against. It was a bit surreal in the second half, 14 against 13, and in fairness to Laois, they tried to the very end. They are a potentially devastating full-forward line. But they’ll be coming up against stronger teams, with better backs. And they’re not going to have the space they got today.

“But Laois were playing a tough, hard brand of hurling, which is their tradition. But our lads wanted to make a statement too, that they were going to stand up and defend themselves.”

For Niall Rigney, the Laois manager, thoughts can only turn to their qualifier game in five weeks, but he tried to take some positives out of a heavy defeat.

“I do think our lads deserve some credit,” he said. “It was always going to be difficult task, facing into Galway, even if we’d the full panel of players. And when we lose two very important players in Mick McEvoy and James Young it’s very hard to battle on. But I think we did battle on, and I’m proud of the lads.

“We’ve five weeks to get ready for the next match. They’re a young bunch of lads, average age 22, and they don’t deserve to be knocked. They’re doing their best.

“But Galway are a class team. Clinical, and powerful. Laois are still mentally weak, and that’s what I’m trying to change, old habits. But it takes time. For too long Laois have thrown in the towel, but they battled there until the end. Seventeen points for us is not a bad score, but of course goals win matches.”