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Stephen Duff finally saw his Laois Ladies side record their first win of this year’s Division 3 campaign as they cruised to victory over Limerick on Sunday afternoon.
Speaking after the game, Duff expressed his delight at securing the result they had travelled to Rathkeale to achieve.
He also stressed that Laois’ main battle is with themselves rather than the opposition.
“Oh yeah, delighted with the result. We said coming down today, we’re in a battle with ourselves.
“We’re fully confident in this division that if we perform, we win 80–90% of the games. We didn’t perform the last two days, and we didn’t win them; we didn’t deserve to win them.
“We went out today in a position that we had to get a win, and we had to get a result, and if we could put a score up, we put a score up, and we got that opportunity today.
“The rest of the league is a battle with ourselves. Delighted to get the result, but there are definitely areas of improvement. That was probably a 6 out of 10 performance. So, definitely areas for us to improve,” he said.
Duff was also able to give game time to most of his panel on Sunday, helped by the league’s unlimited substitutions, and he emphasised how important squad depth will be later in the season.
“There are four or five girls who haven’t got a run. Anyone who’s been there since December has probably got a run at this stage, which is nice.
“People who came back later and people who maybe started other games didn’t get a run today.
“It’s important we build our panel because we saw last year that we needed 20–25 players going into an All-Ireland Championship.
“We need to have a strong panel, and we want to hold on to everyone that we have,” he added.
Although Laois eventually won by 23 points, Duff admitted their opening quarter was below the standard they would expect, with the sides level at three points apiece after 15 minutes.
“There were definitely moments that we weren’t happy about, especially in that first quarter.
“Second half, then, when the game opened up, we saw more opportunity for us to go wide and find space, and we got more goals because of it. We are confident that if we get players one-on-one, we can beat them because of our power, but for some strange reason, the girls love to go one versus four and try to burrow our way through. That’s something we’re working on.
“Other teams put up a better, stronger defence than that, and other teams pressed out on us and gave us more space. So look, we just have to react to what’s in front of us, and we didn’t react well in that first 20 minutes,” Duff said.
One area where Laois found success was in targeting Limerick’s kick-outs.
That approach paid off midway through the first half, when Laois turned over a restart and Emma Lawlor finished for a goal, with the next kick-out also leading to a goal from Laura Marie Maher.
“We always target teams’ kick-outs in different ways. We had a feeling we could get some joy out of it today.
“We got some joy out of it in fits and bursts. I think we could be an awful lot better, loads to work on. We’ve lost the height of Jane and Anna Moore, which is something, but still an awful lot to do.
“Keepers in ladies’ football tend to have a big tell of where they’re going to kick the ball, and we’re not clueing into that very quickly, so that’s something we might go after next week.
“This week was very much about our attack and our defensive shape, which wasn’t good against Down.
“We were running down bottlenecks and Down were able to get in past our defensive line very easily, so that was two things we wanted to improve on today, and I think we did in some areas, but still definitely more to improve on,” he said.
Laois now have a week off before facing Clare in Ennis. Clare are still without a win in the division and conceded seven goals to Down on Sunday.
Duff said Laois are focused on rebuilding standards after taking just one point from their opening two games.
“No game is easy in this Division 3 and intermediate, it’s such a close, competitive division.
“A bit of momentum, like we saw last year, and it can carry you all the way to the end of the year. It’s about getting it right at the right time.
“Look, we want to get out of Division 3. We want to be better than what we were in the last two weeks. For Laois in the past, it’s not acceptable to lose to Down, but that’s our level now, and we have to go and win those games.
“We didn’t win those games, they were better than us. We want to start getting Laois back to a place where that doesn’t happen, and Fermanagh doesn’t happen.
“It’s just about building standards and what’s acceptable for this group and what’s not acceptable for this group. The turnover of players doesn’t help, but it gets to the point where we have to hold ourselves accountable.
“That’s our minimum level now; that must be our minimum level there today, and anything above that is what we’re achieving, we don’t dip below it again,” he concluded.
SEE ALSO – Ladies Football: Laois up and running in Division 3 following big win over Limerick
