KEVIN O’Boyle says Antrim cannot look elsewhere for blame after their defensive indiscipline helped give Wicklow a share of the spoils in their Division Four clash.
Nine of Wicklow’s 12 points came from frees, four of which were brought closer to goal by referee Niall McKenna for dissent by Antrim players.
While the official’s general performance was one of the major talking points on a wintry day in west Belfast, Antrim skipper O’Boyle felt his side should have learned their lesson much sooner, and that they cannot afford any repeat from here on.
“I think they got nine frees and their ‘keeper and the rest of their players executed them well.
“We have to take lessons from it, we perhaps gave away too many frees and gave the referee too many excuses to blow.
“Quite often he brought the ball into scoring range for them and for us, that’s a bitter pill to swallow and something we have to take back. I know that won’t happen again on our part.
“You’re in control of your game. You’re not in control of the weather, so you had to take the pitch as it was today.
“You’re not in control of the referee, so you can only look after yourself and whatever way the referee sets the game, you have to apply yourself to that.
“He didn’t let you speak back but after the first time we should have learned our lesson, and perhaps we didn’t.
“Perhaps it was very little at times the frees were moved forward for, but you’re in control of yourself. We have to go back and analyse it and move forward,” said the Cargin man.
There was an unmistakable air from the home changing room of a point lost rather than one gained but O’Boyle feels the result could yet work in their favour in the promotion race.
The Saffrons lost some ground on early league leaders Laois and Carlow, both of whom have won each of their opening three games.
Antrim had two from two and were expected to continue that sequence, but found themselves frustrated by John Evan’s dogged 13 men, who came from behind four times in the second half to share the spoils on a wintry afternoon.
“That point could positively be the difference at the end of the league campaign, it could still be in our hands. We have four games left, a couple of big games at that, and if we win them we’ll go up.
“We have to take every game as it comes. I said at the start of the year that every game’s a dogfight against teams like Wicklow.
“They make it very difficult to play, they make sure every ball’s contested and you have to make sure you’re up for every game.
“You have to give credit to them but we were 0-4 to 0-0 down after the first 10 minutes. That bad start left us that we had a lot of work to do and we had to exert a lot of energy to get ourselves back into that game.
“You have to look back as to why that is. If we had started better, it might have given us a bit of a platform.
“As it was, it maybe gave Wicklow a bit of encouragement after their first two games, they were thinking ‘this is a game we can go at’. Rather than make it a dogfight, I would have liked to have got off to a better start to the game.”
