Kelleher delighted with better display
SOCCER
Daire Walsh
HIS side may have been on the receiving end of a 3-1 defeat to Peamount United in the Continental Tyres Women’s National League last Saturday evening, but Cork City WFC manager Frank Kelleher nevertheless saw some massive improvements from his side.
The Leesiders had come into this fixture on the back of three straight defeats in the league, but Kelleher felt they were the better team for the opening 60 minutes of the play.
“There’s huge improvements. This week, I said to the players, we had to have a serious chat about where we want to go with this team, and I think we had a fantastic response for 60 minutes.
“I think we played great football, I think our organisation was very, very good. I think people stepped up, their attitude was right. All the things we spoke about in training, they did,” Kelleher said.
“I think in the first hour we were the better side, if I’m very honest. I think we dominated possession in the first-half. I think our movement was excellent off the ball. We went in at half-time 1-0 up, and I thought we deserved it,” he said.
Cork had taken the lead on 17 minutes with an excellent finish by Danielle Sheehy, and Kelleher praised the part played by the lone striker and international star Saoirse Noonan in helping the visitors to break the deadlock.
“I think the finish was fantastic. It was a fantastic take down by Saoirse Noonan on her chest, and she just played that little slide rule pass in for Danielle.
“We worked on that in training, where if one of them drops into the 10 position and gets hold of it, we always have our runners in behind just to play that little threaded ball in, and Danielle took the finish very, very well,” he said.
However, although they led their Dublin counterparts with 70 minutes gone on the clock, Kelleher acknowledged that they need to work on maintaining their level of performance for the full duration of games.
“It seems to be the story of our season, and probably some of last season as well. If you switch off at this level for three or four minutes, you’ll get punished, and Peamount are a good side. They have a very, very good group of players, and we knew that they were going to come out second-half and cause us some problems.
“We spoke about what we needed to do, but again I think fatigue cost us a little bit. That’s something that we’re trying to work on with our strength and conditioning coach. To get the players to be able to play for 90 minutes,” Kelleher said.