SELECTOR Ciaran Deely admitted that London were 'very disappointed' with how Saturday's Allianz Football League Division Four clash with Longford unfolded at Ruislip.
The injury enforced absences of Greg Crowley, Conor Sheridan and Mark Gottsche ensured London were understrength, but Longford were just too clinical. “We are very disappointed because we put in two good performances against Offaly, who are just a better team than us really and Carlow-where we did very well,” Deeley said. “We performed very well, we racked up a big score and two soft goals cost us there.
“This wasn't the performance we were expecting. Obviously we are very disappointed, we had a couple of injuries lads like Conor Sheridan, who has probably been our best player this season and Mark Gottsche were out. Still we aren't using it as an excuse.
“I don't think the scoreline was unjust. It was one of those days where our own performance was poor. They are a good team, they are well organised and set up. They were up for the game and it was one of those where they got on a run and racked up scores.”
Deely was encouraged by how some London players battled. “We did have some good individual performances. I thought our full back line played very well and Martin Carroll worked hard as always. Stephen Curran came in for his first game. We were happy that at the end of the game in the last 10 or 15 minutes we got a chance to give some of the younger players a chance. We were happy with that.
“Our defence played very well. We couldn't fault the lads in defence. Again we weren't really expecting to turn over the ball so much. We had improved on it in the last couple of weeks.”
Deely believes that the current crop of London players can respond. “I think this bunch of guys have been on the road for the last couple of years. It is a matter now of trying to change the mindset of London football. We cannot just come out in the League to be beaten in four out of six games. That is not good enough. It is something we've tried to change this year, this was just one of the days in which we fell back into the old mindset.
“We will keep working hard on it; we want to push on in every game. The performances up to this one were pretty good.
“Morale after the first two games was okay. Coming into the Longford game I'm not going to say we were happy because we lost the two games, but the lads were relatively pleased with the performances against Offaly and Carlow. We felt we should have got two points out of those and during the week we said that the fact we hadn't put us under a little bit of pressure.”
Though London have suffered three losses Deely hopes a settled team will be established ahead of the Championship.
“We are still searching for that first win. We are just looking at getting our performances up to go on a late run in the League ahead of the Championship. We have tried out a lot of players at this stage so hopefully we can start settling on a team. It can be difficult because we have no challenge or practice games. Still we don't have any excuses for this performance.”
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