Lynch blasts Ulster branch after defeat

Lynch was annoyed that the branch decided to play the Ulster qualifying League play-off decider against arch rivals Armagh, only five days before their first All Ireland Round Robin qualifying encounter with Seapoint.

The New Zealander believed that his players failed to get adequate time to recover from their biggest game of the season and worse was the fact that centres David Funston and Jared Bennett both picked up injuries in the victory over Armagh and failed to recover in time for the match against the Dubliners.

“There’s no doubt about it, we lost our centres going into this game,” he said.

“The middle of the field is an important place for us and obviously the boys up front have played far too much rugby.

“I’m gutted. We were hoping for a bit more support from the Ulster Branch and this is what they’ve done to us.

“No one is going to help us in this situation so it’s up to us to go back and have a look at what we need to work on and look forward to the next two play-offs.”

Despite losing on Saturday, Lynch remains upbeat and confident his side can do enough in their remaining two matches against Monivea and Richmond and gain promotion.

“Of course we believe we can still do it; last year we were in the same position but we had picked up a bonus point,” he declared.

“We’ll be chasing the bonus point hard, to try and get the promotion play-off. It’s a massive disappointment; the boys have worked really hard and to fall down just like that and let in a soft try at the end and not even get a bonus point was really disappointing.

“We’re disappointed not to come up with the result here but we really need to pick up two bonus points in the next two games and deprive whoever we play of a bonus point and I would say we’re looking at April 24th for a play-off.”

Lynch was frustrated that his side had too many errors on Saturday and he was also annoyed that his players kicked the ball too much instead of playing their usual running game.

“We made a lot of uncharacteristic mistakes against Seapoint, I think we had the time and the space to create a lot more than we did so I’m massively disappointed for the boys, we really should have taken it home in the second half,” he explained.

“Maybe that’s the result of playing two games in one week, we just didn’t have the cylinders really to go in the last 40 minutes. We had the personalities to win, but we didn’t execute and if you don’t execute you don’t get the result you want so obviously it’s a big blow for us but there are still two more play-offs to go.

“After half-time we played into the wind, we were pretty confident at 6-6 but we failed to play a bit of rugby and didn’t turn territory into points so well done to Seapoint for taking the win.

“I think we kicked the ball too much; we’re a side that builds phases and creates opportunities and anytime we put together three phases against this side there was many opportunities but unfortunately we just relied on kicking it down there thinking that was going to take care of it.

“We gave Seapoint plenty of possession and they managed to build the momentum and got a bit more confidence,” concluded the Derry coach.