Des Lane impressed by the Blues' ability to overcome long lay off in league Final

Two of three ain’t bad,” Newtown Blues legend Danny Nugent whispered to Blues manager Des Lane when walking off the field in Darver after capturing the Cardinal O’Donnell Cup on Saturday night. 

Lane shared the same sentiment “Three finals this year and we won two. We missed the big one but we'll come back. Was it a plus that we were playing Ardee? it probably was,” Lane figured.

“Like we haven't played a match for 8 weeks. The last match we played was the replay. And we haven't even had a challenge match. We had a couple of weeks off and we came back at it and to be fair they stuck at it.

“We had nights we couldn't train because of the weather and the pitches. We were trying to do other things but to be fair to them as Alan (Connor) said in his speech, we started on the 6th of January and we rowed in behind this and we kept to it and they never gave up on it.”

The Blues led from the off, but Lane felt they could have been out of sight rather than feeling the pressure of Luke Matthews' late goal.

“I would have liked with the opportunities we had to not only protect the lead, but to see it out far easier than we did" he explained.

"We butchered a couple of chances and the eight week lay off didn't help us when it came to sharpness in front of goals. We had seven wides in the first half.

“It is the story of our last four or five matches. We make hard work of it. We're in a driving seat and then you think we just have to see it out and kick on and then we make hard work of it. To be fair to Ardee, they came back and they came back strong.”

In his first year at the Newfoundwell helm, the Meath native was not afraid to tinker with his selections and he felt a reshuffling of the deck to a more defensive approach paid off handsomely.

"We changed it up even for the replay, but when you keep doing the same thing and not getting the right result it is a sign of madness and a stupid thing to do, so we did change it up. We hadn't a match for eight weeks. We were conscious of our fitness levels so we had to play a little bit smarter.”