Sligo buoyed by Division 4 League Final victory

By John Harrington

Sligo manager Tony McEntee believes his team will get a good championship bounce from todays Allianz Football League Division 4 Final victory over Wicklow.

They play London in the Connacht SFC Quarter-Final next Saturday and go into that match now with their tails up after this hard-fought win.

It's 2010 since Sligo last won a cup and cups are precious, said McEntee after the game.

There won't be many teams in the country this year that win trophies. I think every opportunity we get to win a trophy should be taken and grasped with both hands.

Winning that cup today is important. It's important for mentality, it's important for progress. We're going in now to a championship match against London this week and we're now going in positive rather than negative should we have been defeated here today.

So I think the trophy and success today is something that will have us buoyant. I think the success we had today will build a lot of bonds.

Sligos ultimate victory wasnt apparent for most of the first half of this match because Wicklow were the much more impressive team in the early running, opening up a five-point lead.

But then Sligo danger-man, Niall Murphy, burst to life, scoring a quickfire 1-1 that hauled his team into the contest, and they were the dominant force in the second-half.

To be honest, I think we made it to half time just about, admitted McEntee. And then we got a bit of organisation and structure about us and we turned up for the second-half.

I don't think we turned up well at all for the first half and struggled for large periods of it. Maybe it was the occasion, I don't know, but we sat off on them when they were making runs and there was so much wrong with that first half.

To be fair to them, they put in a really strong display in the second half and had more opportunities than maybe the scoreboard suggests.

We had amble opportunities where we broke free in that second half and were wasteful more than anything else.

Wicklow manager, Oisin McConville, regretted his team couldnt build further on their early dominance, but was proud of his players regardless of the result.

I thought we started the game really well, he said. I thought our first 20 minutes was very good. The goal before half-time, we just switched off. We were very comfortable at 0-7 to 0-2. We actually missed a chance and they went down the field and got a goal. I don't think we put a hand on anyone the whole way down the pitch.

We were under pressure in the second-half because when you have to come out chasing it against them...to be fair to them they're just a wee bit further down the line as far as what they were bringing off the bench and that. As far as the way they're conditioned. And they just added that extra bit of pace.

We're disappointed, but I'm proud of our boys' performance because coming into the game not many people would have given us much of a shout and I thought we bossed it for long periods. Maybe it was just a little bit of extra experience eon their behalf and a little bit of inexperience on our behalf.

We coughed up a bit of ball early on in the second-half and that sort of came back and bit us. But, again, couldn't be any prouder of our boys because it's a long journey from where we've come from to be in here today.

The one thing I didn't want today was for them to walk away and feel like they didn't do themselves justice and I think they did themselves justice today.

You don't get time to dwell on it anyway which is a brilliant thing. We'll be back at it next Sunday so that's good for these boys, they just need to recover properly and we'll get at it again during the week and be ready to go.