Kilkenny manager Derek Lyng reacts to Allianz Hurling league defeat to Cork

Kilkenny manager Derek Lyng was in reflective mood as he met the assembled media after Saturday night’s league defeat to Cork.

The Emeralds man was disappointed at some of their finishing which he felt cost them come the final whistle.

“I felt that we left a lot of chances behind us especially in the first half and I think we had 22 missed shots over the course of the game that went either wide or dropped short and that’s just not good enough at this level as you have to be taking your scores.

“I felt Cork got their scores a little bit easier and I thought we had to work harder for ours and that was the most disappointing thing.

“We also missed a couple of frees near the end that could have asked a question or two of Cork but we didn’t take them and they had a cushion of two or three points for the final few minutes and that was disappointing”.

Lyng was of the opinion that the Cats were always in contention and it was their conversion rate that let them down.

“We’re encouraging lads to take shots when they are on and I thought we didn’t connect with our efforts for whatever reason and it’s something you’d like to see improving as the year moves on.

“We’ll have to be a lot more clinical at the same time.

“Missed chances can suck the energy out ofyou at some points but I still think we were always in the game before Cork went four points clear with about 10 minutes to play”, he added.

Injuries played a part?

“We are training hard at the minute too but you’d still like to see us finishing out the game a bit stronger now.

“The effort is there and the attitude is good and we’ve lads still to come back which will help even if we got one or two injuries in the game there that probably stopped us bringing on a few fresher legs with 15 minutes to go so we’d a few issues there that we had to change around”.

Among the players to go off was goalscorer Stephen Donnelly and he proved to be a big loss for the Noresiders.

“It was a shame that we lost Stephen (Donnelly) for the second half as he was a real threat in attack and he took his goal really well but hopefully it’s nothing too bad even if we still had to take him off.