Cribbin Happy With Offaly Character
Thursday, 1 July 2010
TOM Cribbin was happy with the character Offaly showed after they pulled back from the brink of despair to defeat Clare in the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship qualifier in Tullamore on Saturday evening last.
The Offaly manager said after the game:
'For 15 minutes near the end of the second-half they showed the character and the bottle that they have and that they are able to do it. Most games that we play we end up hitting purple patches like that and your thinking, why can't we just play like that consistently?
'There are a lot of those young lads and they haven't won championship matches with Offaly at underage or senior level and it is affecting them a little bit. But today they showed great character. The pressure they were putting themselves under pressure to try and get a victory today was unreal. They actually put too much pressure on themselves.'
The Kildare native agreed that it was a very important game for Offaly to win.
'We couldn't lose that game today because I don't know how we would have been able to pick the lads up to be honest with you because they battled back so hard and built up a brillinat lead of six points. Next thing we stepped back a bit again to protect the lead more than trying to drive on.
Hopefully that will be a monkey off their backs and I think it will be for a lot of those younger lads. It was Scott (Brady) and Ciaran (McManus) and the other older stages who settled things down and kept calm and kept it going. The young lads fed off them then.
'If you compare some of the points kicked in the last ten minutes of normal time with some of the wides kicked earlier on, your wondering if you are looking at the same players and how could they turn it around like that. The thing is there is so much pressure on them and they really want to do it. They really, really want to do it for Offaly because they know the tradition is here and the people expect it. I think they are putting themselves under too much pressure and now hopefully we can move.'
Will it help the younger players?
'Definitely. We have a young centre-back. That was just his (Ross Brady's) third game at the position and he was brilliant for a lad of 21 years of age. Anton (Sullivan) is only 18 and you saw the composure he showed to kick that point and Graham Guilfoyle and Sean Pender made an impact. Sometimes people will ask why you don't start all the young lads but sometimes when you are bringing them on, the same pressure isn't there in the build up to the game. The older lads have win before and they know what to expect. They are calmer and cooler. Ger Rafferty and Alan McNamee have rejoined the panel for me and they are a huge asset. They are great to have around the lads with Ciaran and Karol and hopefully we can get a reasonable draw again and hopefully we can take it to the next step.
'In fairness to some of the lads they were very sick during the week and were on anti-biotics and some of them were still on them but we didn't have much choice but to go with them. We had three lads there that were sick today but hopefully we can clear it all up and have a full compliment for the next day.'
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