LONDON manager Paul Coggins is adamant the Exiles 'have nothing to fear' ahead of their June 20 All Ireland football qualifiers round 1a assignment.
With the draw scheduled to take place next week Coggins believes London have the potential to post a win or two this summer. Carlow, Offaly, Cavan, Longford, Kildare/Laois, Antrim, and Waterford are all possible opponents for London.
“I don’t think we should fear any team in our side of the draw,” Coggins told The Irish Post. “We can compete against any team – we proved that against Roscommon. We have nothing to fear.
“It would be nice to get a home draw. Ruislip should still be available I haven’t heard anything to the contrary - it would be great to have another game there.”
Reflecting on the 1-14 to 0-10 Connacht Senior Football Championship defeat to Roscommon Coggins was enthused by the performance. Being more clinical in attack, though, is something Coggins wants to rectify ahead of the qualifiers.
“We had 25 chances during the game Roscommon had 24,” Coggins said. “So it is easy enough to analyse where the difference was. Roscommon converted a higher proportion of their chances; their finishing was better.
“We felt that we could have converted more especially in the first half. We created lots of opportunities then, but we kicked a few scoreable chances away. That was disappointing, but we must be realistic too.
“We did land some great scores also, but one thing we will look to do in the next few weeks is to work on converting those chances we make. We did a lot of good things to create chances so that is encouraging for us.
“When we analyse the game you have to take into account that we are a Division Four team and we competed with a team that will be in Division One next year. That is good and the lads were very positive about everything because we were extremely competitive throughout. The good teams are clinical and that is what we will need to be in the qualifiers.”
Following the Roscommon reversal London commenced preparations for their next clash 48 hours after that loss.
“We met again on the Tuesday evening for a recovery session and we were back training again on Thursday. We hope to have a few players back available for the qualifiers following injury which will boost us further.
“We had a tough opening game, but that will stand to us. I have no doubt about that. We absolutely feel that we could win a game or two. What we won’t do is look too far ahead, history has taught us not to do that. We have aspects of our game that we need to work on and we will do that.
“The really good teams make you pay when you make a mistake. Roscommon did that especially early on when they got a few scores from our errors more than anything else. If we can reduce the amount of errors and turnovers we can be a match for anybody.”
