Cathal Dowd
Waterford Camogie manager Mick Boland put his side’s 0-11 to 0-16 Round 5 All-Ireland Senior Championship loss to Galway yesterday down to “too many errors” on the day.
Waterford were beaten in Kenny Park after a late rally by Galway saw them pull ahead in convincing fashion.
Galway had the lead several times in the game, which Waterford were able to claw back from, but the home side were eventually able to stay ahead and inflict a first defeat of the campaign on Waterford.
Boland felt his team had done themselves no favors against a good team, telling WLR, “It was a tough encounter, we probably made an awful lot of handling errors where we have control of our own ball and we gave it away too easily, we just made too many errors today”.
He acknowledged the fight Waterford had showed throughout the game, but kept giving themselves too much to do “We worked very hard in the second half to get back into the game, we were 3 points down and we got ourselves back into the game but we made a simple mistake giving the free away and then all of a sudden you are a point down and you are chasing the game again”.
Boland looked on the bright side of missing out on semi-final qualification, “That’s all we can do really, we just have to put our heads down and prepare, and an extra match in Croke Park will probably do us the power of good, to actually get used to that surface”.
Despite good performances from the likes of Niamh Rockett and Annie Fitzgerald, Waterford were held to just 11 points on a wet day in Galway. “Our biggest problem was when we were putting the ball in, they had brought so many bodies back behind the ball, in their own half and we were trying for a big score”, said Boland, “You would have to work the ball exceptionally well through the lines, and the problem was with a wet, slippery ball it wasn’t really possible to do that”.
“I’m happy with the performance overall”, he reflected, so “All in all, it’s positive, but we just need to go back and review our video analysis and have a look at a lot of errors we made”.
Waterford will now face Clare in the All-Ireland Quarter Final on July 5th as Galway progress straight to the Semi Final.
