Brian makes his point
Brian White gets past Gareth Sheridan during Sunday's clash at the Gaelic Grounds. The Cooley Kickhams player ended the game with 0-6.
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Wednesday March 10 2010
WHEN things aren't going your way you need someone to step up and grab a game by the scruff of the neck, and on Sunday that man was Brian White.
Louth were at sixes and sevens in the opening fifteen minutes, but when Ronan Carroll retired injured and White took his place in the middle of the park, the Reds slowly clawed their way back into a game that threatened to run away from them.
The Cooley Kickhams man started on the wing and while he insisted afterwards that he doesn't care where he plays, Fitzpatrick will almost certainly think twice about leaving him out of the centre if Paddy Keenan is out.
'I don't mind where I play,' White insisted. 'Out around the middle you can get on the ball and spray a few passes around, but I don't mind – it's not nice sitting on the bench.'
Focusing on the game itself, White admitted that relief was the over-riding emotion in the Louth dressingroom.
'We knew today was going to be a massive game because we knew if we lost we'd be dragged into a relegation dogfight, but it was great to pull through in the end even though we made hard work of it again.
'We could have been eight or nine points down in the first ten minutes, Neil made a few good saves and they had a few bad misses, but we kept our heads and pushed on and I think we got seven out of the last eight scores of the first half.
'We were happy going in ahead, but we were disappointed with the number of silly mistakes we made too. We knew we had to pick it up big time in the second half. We kind of did that, but we still made a few mistakes and we'll have to work on that on Tuesday and Thursday.'
White's frees were crucial as Louth opened a six-point gap in the second period, but he admitted to feeling a little nervous in the closing stages as Cavan threatened to mount a comeback.
'We kept shouting at each other to foul them and lucky enough we got out of it with the two points. Hopefully we can push on and learn that you have to be more ruthless when you get ahead.
'The way we're looking at it is that every team [in Division 3] is beatable and maybe they're thinking Louth are beatable too, but we go into every game believing we can get the two points; hopefully we can win all of our home games, get six points from that and then build from there.'
The Cooley sharpshooter spared a thought for his Under-21 colleagues in the panel, who had to put an agonising extra-time defeat behind them and turn their attentions to the Cavan game 24 hours later.
'Hopefully this win will get them back on the horse again. It was disappointing for them yesterday, they were very unlucky, but hopefully this will push them on because we need them for the run-in in the league,' he added.
- John SAVAGE
