Depleted Sligo looking to regroup for Wicklow in Christy Ring

Sligo hurling manager Stephen Shiel said after their three-point defeat at home to Tyrone, their third loss of the Christy Ring campaign, that it’s important the players regroup and focus on getting a win against Wicklow. Sligo are down a significant number of players through injury.

He told the press after the match: “I’m disappointed, there is not much you can take from it to be fair.

“Disappointment is probably an understatement to be fair because after coming back from London, we tried to get going again but it is what it is unfortunately.

“Tyrone were probably in the first half a little bit stronger than us and we came out in the second half fighting, but it just wasn’t enough,” the manager said.

He said the goal just before half-time was unfortunate and really changed the team talk.

“I won’t tell you what I said at half-time but it wasn’t pretty.

“Silly mistakes like individual mistakes let us down. Dropping ball, not striking far enough, carrying the ball into tackles and stuff like that. It was just sloppiness but listen, the lads are disappointed and I’m disappointed but what can you do.

“We were getting a bit of change of getting the long ball into Gerard and Conor Griffin but when we had the extra man we said we would leave the extra man in the back and just get the ball in long and see what we can do but it just wasn’t enough.”

He said that if the first penalty that went over had gone in, Sligo might have come away with a draw.

“It is ifs and buts and maybes though. To be fair, Rory wasn’t going for a point and he just whipped over the crossbar but if we hadn’t given away sloppy mistakes in the first half, we would have went in on a different scoreline at half-time.

“I suppose we have to try and get our thoughts now and go to Wicklow and that’s going to be a tough game mentally for us as much as physically.

“It’s going to come down to who wants it more and we spoke to the lads before in the hotel and then at half-time that they just needed a little bit of pride and do it for everyone around, their clubs, their families, the county in general. We started promising enough for the second half but just didn’t get over the line.”

Sligo have a number of injuries including Finnian Cawley and Eddie O’Donoghue and the manager said it’s hopeful they should be back in time.

“We have a week gap now before the Wicklow game and if you look at the full panel, we were without a good number of players. There is a lot of lads out there that if we had them fit or near fit, it would be a completely different dynamic.

“We play with the hand we are dealt and that’s as best we could do I suppose.”

With the U20s footballers unfortunately bowing out of Connacht, there are hopes to bring in a number from that team too into the panel.

“There’s a few that we had in mind at the very start of the year and they got a choice to stay with the footballers and come play hurling and to be fair I told them to go with the footballers because they will only be U20 for a couple of years so we are in talks with them already just with the amount of injuries that we have, we need on the field for training and things like that,” he added.

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