‘I’m not happy with our performance’- Kilkenny Under 20 Boss Mark Dowling

Mark Dowling’s opening game as Kilkenny under-20 manager certainly didn’t go to plan as he watched his side lose out to Wexford.

The Dicksboro man was disappointed at how his team let an early lead slip as well as falling down on some of the basics of the game.

“We completely went out of the game and I thought we had a very good opening eight, nine or 10 minutes and a similar strong ending,” he said. “In between though we completely fell away and what happened I don’t really know.

“I was disappointed with our lack of intensity in the period between the first and last 10 minutes and really they bossed it at those points.

“We also had some very poor handling errors and poor passes while ultimately their two goals came from our own mistakes.”

Wexford were a lot closer to full strength than a Kilkenny side that was shorn of Billy Drennan, Timmy Clifford and Gearoid Dunne who were all on senior league final duty, but Dowling wasn’t offering any excuses.

“Wexford were very sharp and I think when a team is on top regardless of the scoreline, everything looks really good for them.

“Ultimately we were on the back foot at that stage. We were struggling to regain momentum after the first 10 minutes and in the end we didn’t.”

The Cats did finish the game by hitting the last five points with the likes of Harry Shine, Niall Rowe, Jeff Neary and James Carroll providing big impact from the bench but even their late cameo didn’t improve Dowling’s tone.

“We got good impact from our subs but unfortunately it was to little too late and leaving it to the last 10 minutes to make a surge at this level against a team like Wexford on their home patch is just not enough.

“I’m not happy really and I’m not going to lie on that point - playing for 15 or 16 minutes of hurling out of a game that lasts 65 minutes is not enough.

“You train for a number of months to prepare for this and I’m just really disappointed that we didn’t perform for a longer period of the match.

“You won’t have 60 minutes of dominance obviously but I felt we could have been a bit better in certain aspects of our play.

“There was a bit of character in the way we ended the game but as I said already, it arrived just a bit too late.”

Kilkenny don’t have the time to dwell too much on the Wexford defeat as Galway and Dublin both await over the next two weekends.

The round-robin structure that guarantees at least a Leinster quarter-final spot does offer the defending champions a bit of leeway, but they’ll still be looking to get off the mark when travelling to Tullamore this Saturday for a 2pm start with Galway.

“The Galway game is coming quick and once we walk out of here it was always going to be a case whether we won lost or drew that our attention was going to switch to the next game.

“We just have to clear our heads and concentrate on the Galway game which now becomes an even bigger challenge and the level of importance is after heightening as well.”