Longford senior hurling manager Derek Frehill finding it hard to work out what went wrong

Frehill said: “I thought we were in a good place. To be honest we were outplayed around the pitch. There are no excuses. Fermanagh brought a real intensity and we didn’t match it. In sport you get days when nothing you do is working out for you. Some of Longford’s best hurlers struggled on the day.”

 The Galway man admitted Fermanagh were the better team but felt the game turned on a decision in the second half where the Erne County got a crucial goal.

 He said: “I would have no excuse, the best team won on the day but the big turning point in the game was throwing in the ball for the quick puck-out. It was a peculiar decision and it ends up in our net, 20 seconds later.”

For Frehill Longford’s shot selection and their poor distribution was something that baffled him. They had worked hard on it. He can’t put a finger on why things were so bad.

 “Our shot selection in the first half was poor. We had been going well feeding the ball into the full-forward line. Our distribution was poor. In fairness to the boys we had put in a huge amount of work on that. 

“For some reason things just didn’t go right for us. We were struggling in so many areas. Fermanagh were full value for their win and had their game plan spot on.”

Frehill hasn’t made any decision on his future with Longford. He is taking time to think about it and then talk to the players and the county board.

 “I haven’t spoken to the rest of the management team. There might be one of them that would like to step up or maybe Longford needs a Longford person in charge for a year or two to maybe settle the ship and bring more players in.

“I don’t want to make a rash decision but I’ve put a lot in from the travelling point of view. Sometimes I give myself a couple of days to think about it, on the back of a loss it can be difficult. I haven’t spoken to the county board or the players yet.”

 Frehill would like hurling in Longford to be given support and help. For him football will always be number one for attracting players and he bemoaned losing players over this.

 “The one thing I argued about is the preference for players in the county to play football first.  Some of those lads are a loss to hurling.

”The county board have been great and I found them excellent but you are dealing with completely football based people. You look at the team, the survival of Longford hurling is based on outside players. We haven’t seen a huge turnover of young fellas coming into the squad,” stated Frehill.