Flanagan bemoans Kildare's conversion rate in late loss to Westmeath

“Very disappointing” was Kildare manager's Brian Flanagan immediate response in his after-match comments following his side's two point defeat to Westmeath in the final of the Dioralyte O'Byrne Cup final on Friday night in St Conleth's Park.

“Twice in the game we were in a good position to kick-on and win it, if you look at the first half we were five from fifteen (conversion rate) if you look at the shots, when we came in at half-time, a lot of damage done in that aspect.

“We started well, missed our first few shots but nailed three two-pointers in a row and that seemed to feed through that we were going to take that tactic until half-time but that didn't work out, we would have been disappointed with the conversion rate at half-time, thought we steadied it in the second half, we seemed to do that in the first ten or fifteen minutes and then lost our way a bit again.”

Flanagan added that you would be disappointed with that, you'd be disappointed with the game management coming down the home stretch but that is what the upside is, it is the middle of January lads, and we have got three competitive games here (O'Byrne Cup), we've got to look at an awful lot of players and it was never going to be perfect, we knew that there would be mistakes and they would be error-ridden at this time of the year but I think we are in a really good position from a squad depth, the panel point of view and the learnings from the last few weeks and this will only stand to us going into Omagh next weekend.

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