Cork's Cleary left ruing concession of “softish” Louth goals

Cork manager John Cleary again, came away from Ardee with a loss. That’s two weekends now that the Lee-siders have failed to crack a team away from home.

Cleary felt his side did enough but Louth’s greater efficiency was the difference. “The result is disappointing,” Cleary began.

“I thought the performance was quite good, we controlled the game there for long periods. It was on the day that they got the goals and we didn’t.

“We had two goal chances, two probably clear goal chances, one at the end there and we didn’t get them. They got theirs.“Overall, look, I wasn’t that disappointed with the display. It was a way ahead of what we had last week.

Things didn’t go right for us in terms of conceding two softish goals and getting a black card in the first-half. I thought we fought very hard, fought like demons to the end and, look, on another day we might have got something out of it.”

Cleary felt Louth’s two goals were not dealt with well by his defence. With both Ciarán’s Downey, and Keenan punishing lapses in the Cork rearguard after they went back to 15 men on the field.

“Absolutely. We’ll have a look at them on the video,” he said “From the line, they seemed like definitely avoidable goals. But look, in fairness to Louth, they stood up and took the goals and it gave us a bit of a hill to climb coming in at half-time a point down.”

“But I did think our second-half performance was very, very good and on another day, look, we might have got something out of it. But we didn’t and ultimately the goals were the difference. Louth got them and we didn’t.”

Tipped for promotion Cork are now looking down the table as a result, not up as was thought before the campaign.

Cleary is keen to put the Louth game well and truly behind them.

“Yeah, look, when the draw was made we knew we had two tough away trips and that’s the way it turned out to be.

"Last week we were disappointed, we didn’t really show up but today we played quite well at times and controlled the game but just didn’t put the scores on the board and ultimately that’s what it’s about.

“It’s the second game out of the way now and we’ll dust ourselves down and prepare for Cavan in two weeks’ time. That’s all we can do.”