‘We didn’t give a fair reflection of ourselves’- Mark Dowling reflects on Under-20 loss

It was undoubtedly a difficult day for Kilkenny under-20 boss Mark Dowling as he saw his team beaten in Saturday’s All-Ireland final, but the Dicksboro man still fronted up afterwards and summarised the game.

“It’s a tough one to take and to be honest we never really got to the pitch of the game at all and we never got a flow going.

“Even in the first half we had the aid of the wind but we never seemed to get moving with it and on reflection I kind of felt that we maybe needed a goal in that first half and to go in at half-time ahead.

“I’m not going to dress it up as anything other than the better team won as there’s no point in saying otherwise and I thought Tipperary were outstanding.

“We made a few very obvious mistakes in the game and like a good team they punished us and that was tough.”

Dowling who just concluded his third year as manager did acknowledge that his side were well beaten and they didn’t produce their best performance on the day.

“Things just didn’t happen for us today and that’s sport at the highest level.

“We were living off scraps really and we were probably struggling to get better than a 50-50 outcome in a lot of positions and as a result it failed to allow us get a foothold in the game,” he continued.

The three Tipp goals which all arrived in the second half proved to be the killer blows in the end but Dowling was still full of praise for his full-back line who stood up to a sizeable challenge manfully.

“Any goal is a sucker punch but the timing of the Tipperary ones were especially difficult and maybe we could have done things better but that’s the way it goes and we knew the Tipperary inside line was very dangerous.

“I thought our full back line of Darragh Vereker, Ivan Bolger and Rory Garrett were outstanding considering the amount of defending they had to do and the difficult ball that was coming.”

Tipperary were more accustomed to a big feel occasion and they seem to deal with it the better with their final loss a year ago proving to be huge motivation.

“Tipperary were here in the final last year and that experience definitely stood to them as it’s a big day for under-20s playing in a packed ground.

“The hunger of losing that All-Ireland last year was a factor for them and they’ve a couple of lads in with their senior team but we had that too and I think the big difference was that they hurled really well and unfortunately we just didn’t get to the level that we are capable of.

“That’s the big disappointment really as it’s harder to take when you feel like it wasn’t a true reflection of ourselves.”

The defeated manager still has huge hopes for the future with stepping up to the senior team the next ambition for a number of the players.

“We all wanted to get the win but at the end of the day, there is also a developmental aspect to it and I would like to think that a lot of the lads have now given themselves an opportunity to catch the attention of the senior management and hopefully they can push on and build on what they have achieved this year,” he concluded.