"There's no doubt we can compete at this level"- O'Callaghan takes positives from latest ladies defeat

Despite going almost 40 minutes with scoring and letting a six-point half-time lead slip in their Leinster Championship clash with Westmeath, Kildare ladies manager Morgan O'Callaghan was bullish about his sides prospects for the rest of the year.

He has plenty of reason to be too; if he were to watch just the first half of this game there would be few negatives to take, however, quite conversely, the second half provided little in the way of positives. Kildare clocked up their entire tally of 1-4 as they went into the break with a commanding 1-4 to 0-1 lead, but they failed to create anything of note going forward in the second half as they toiled against the swirling breeze and a spirited fightback from a much improved Westmeath side.

"After 60 minutes you're obviously disappointed," stated O'Callaghan following the loss.

"We were in a great position at half-time, and look, the girls were wonderful in the first half; they did everything we asked of them. They battled really hard, got tackles, turnovers, put pressure on and kicked the scores when the chances arose even though we did miss a couple early on.

"In general though, we were delighted with the way they performed in the first half, and while we still battled hard in the second half, we got turned over a good bit in the first 10 minutes and we struggled with winning our own kickout. Even when we did, we gave the ball away quickly and unfortunately at this level you get punished when you give the ball away," he continued.

The Lilywhites struggled to exit their own half in the second 30 minutes though, and but for a couple of straightforward saves made by Westmeath goalkeeper Karen Walsh on efforts from Róisín Byrne and Niamh Sinnott, the home side never threatened the opposition posts whether it was shooting for points or goals. O'Callaghan said after the game that there was no change in approach, putting the drop off in performance down to a possible 'fear of winning' after losing every competitive game they've been involved in this year.

"Part of it, maybe, was an element that there was a little bit of a fear to push on," he said.

"I suppose that comes too when you haven't won a match all year and you're in these positions, you almost have the fear of winning. You almost go to the negative and protect what you have instead of driving on and I think there was an element of that, even though at half time we told the girls not to and go for it again and keep pushing on and doing what we were doing well.

"I suppose psychologically, as I said, there is a bit of an element of protect what we have and maybe we didn't have the support runners that we need at crucial times in the second half when we were under pressure.

"As far as I'm concerned, it was a big step forward today in terms of progress made. Westmeath are a good team; I've seen them play three or four matches this year and they've a lot of quality, and I thought our defenders worked really hard to put pressure on them. Overall, I'm proud of the girls, it's just really disappointing for them that they didn't get a result, because their hard work deserved a result or something out of that game today," he continued.

Kildare's Niamh Sinnott goes on a run

Considering this is Kildare's first year in the senior ranks and that they have an extremely young and inexperienced side, running a Westmeath team that are undoubtedly one of the best in the country was a sign of progress. The manager is sure that they can compete at this level now, and with the qualifiers not coming up for another few weeks they will have plenty of time to prepare and work on areas that need addressing. One of those areas is fitness, something O'Callaghan feels they must improve if they are to compete.

"If Niamh's Sinnott's goal had went in - the 'keeper made a good save - it was a draw match at that stage if that had went in with a few minutes to go, and it probably would have given our girls real hope to maybe kick on from there," mused O'Callaghan.

"They have to take belief from it. That's what I said when we got them into a huddle; they have to be proud of their efforts today and realise that their able to compete at this level.

"We go into the qualifiers now, and we have to take it forward and we have to be up for the qualifiers and give ourselves a real chance because there's progress being made. No doubt we'll have to do a little bit more on fitness now again. We have four or five weeks to the next match so we'll have to get a bit of fitness work done to boost ourselves up there. If you're battling so hard in the first half I suppose it's hard to carry it through all the way through the game. But as I said, the girls can definitely compete. Westmeath won the Division 2 league final and looked impressive, so there's no doubt we can compete at this level," he concluded.