THE Down ladies reached the All-Ireland Intermediate Championship semi-finals thanks to a gritty, never-say-die victory over Monaghan on Sunday.
That’s the opinion of manager Colm Donnelly, who reflected on their extra-time win at Páirc Esler, Newry.
They were up against a Monaghan team that beat Down in the Ulster Championships at the start of May, but Donnelly’s team got a level of revenge in a very close battle.
“I was most pleased with our never-say-die spirit,” Colm said.
“We could have lost the game towards the end with a free kick in the last 30 seconds.
“Then we could have won the game ten seconds later when we missed a free.”
The game finished all square in full time, 0-12 (Down) to 2-6.
In the preparation for extra time, Colm said the players knew they could win.
“We had the fitness, we had the work done, we just had to go for it.
“The decision was made by the players to just go for it.
“All those dark nights of training in Ardglass in the rain and the wind, this was the time to put that into use.
“In the last ten minutes of extra time we just overpowered Monaghan.”
The Mourne girls showed their class to outscore the Farney county by 0-6 to 0-1 in extra time.
“We had the grit and fitness to finish it out in extra time,” Colm said.
“We battled really heard and it was a typical championship game. It was very physical. It was very fast. There were lots of missed opportunities from both teams.
“It was always going to be a tight game because there is not much difference between Monaghan and Down in fairness.”
It was clear that the mindset was right because of their foundational training earlier in the season.
Colm said: “We didn’t panic too much because we felt that we had done a lot of work on Monaghan in the last two weeks and we did a lot of work on ourselves.
“We were trying to improve our fitness levels and trying to reduce our error count in high-intensity games.”
The game had a topsy-turvy element to it.
While Down finished strong, they had not started well.
Colm said, “We conceded two early goals which obviously put us on the back foot early in the game.
“We felt that had a lot of work done on Monaghan and we were pretty confident going into the game. As long as we didn’t concede too many goals.”
