Somerville rues costly defensive errors

Following his side's narrow defeat to Sporting Fingal at Station Road on Friday evening, Kildare County boss Joey Somerville was left extremely frustrated by the way that his side threw away a two-goal advantage and felt that goal scorer Liam Tiernan had a major role to play in the concession of the three goals on the night.

"It’s such a fickle game, Nelson (Tiernan) scored a screamer to put us two goals ahead and within two minutes he is a hindrance. The three goals came from him, it was complete stupidity. It’s just mind boggling how we do this every single week,” explained Somerville.

“The ball came over the top (for the first goal), he (Tiernan) takes a touch, steps inside, has acres of space and instead of doing what he had been told which was to get them turned which was really hurting them. He tried to play a clever little ball into the midfield and he is not capable of doing that, simple as that and we got caught. All of a sudden their dander is up again with that goal. If we took the sting out of the game for seven or eight minutes after we had scored, the game was over, done and dusted”.

During the crucial final 25 minutes of the contest, County had to play without the services of skipper Dean Lawrence after he picked a knock and while it is always a loss when you lose a player of Lawrence's calibre, Somerville didn't feel it had that big a bearing on the game as a whole.

“I thought Baba did well when he came on so I don’t think it (Lawrence’s injury) had any influence really. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but maybe we need to have a look at a different pairing there and see what else we can get because that pairing (Tiernan and Lawrence) isn’t giving us enough. The centre halves cost us down in Athlone, they’ve cost us again tonight. They have cost us numerous times already this season and it’s not good enough.”

Despite this, Somerville did see a number of positives from the game, which may well give them cause for optimism going into their remaining matches.

“Philly Hughes was excellent, he has been week in week out. Dotsy (Cathal Brady) worked hard on one wing, Orrin Farrell on the other was doing the same. The three boys in the centre of midfield worked very hard. Craig Purcell is still very young, he goes wandering at times but when he stuck to the job he was given, he did well”.

A positive result here really would have put Kildare in a healthier position, but Somerville now admits that they have to pick up wins from their next few encounters.

“We should have taken three points tonight which would have closed the gap on Mervue, they have to come here in two weeks time which would have given us a great chance to put them under pressure but the games coming now against Longford, Mervue, Limerick and Wexford, we have to win them now. A win tonight would have been a massive bonus”, concluded Somerville.