Wexford manager John Hegarty admitted that he was 'gutted' by his side’s defeat to Louth, praising the heart and effort his players displayed in their Leinster SFC clash at Kildare.
Playing against a side two divisions above them in the National League, Wexford were the better team for a large part of the game and were only really undone by two late penalties from Sam Mulroy, coming out on the wrong end of a 4-10 to 0-15 scoreline.
Mulroy’s haul of 2-04 gave the scoreline a lopsided that didn’t really reflect what had transpired on the field.
Ciaran Downey scored Louth's other two goals while Ciaran Keenan won both penalties and there were important scores too from Liam Jackson and Ryan Burns as Louth turned the screw late on.
"I don’t think the scoreboard reflects what that game was like," he said.
"It was gutsy, it was heart but it was good quality as well and we didn’t come up to just show those things, we came up here to win the game.
"We’re going home really disappointed. Not with the heart, not with the commitment, not in everything they gave today, but at crucial moments Louth got goals and that was the difference.
"In the first half we were 0-08 0-04 ahead at one stage and then a goal pulled us back to level going in.
"We stretched ahead in the second half again but then the goals came in."
"Make no mistake about it, we are just gutted today because we feel we are capable of mixing with teams above our station."
Louth manager Ger Brennan agreed that the scoreline was harsh on Wexford and admitted that his side struggled to get into the game early on.
"I’m definitely relieved. It wasn’t pretty but we got the job done in the end," he said.
"It took us a while to really get up to the pace. We were quiet lethargic and that was something we spoke about in the lead-up whereby the expectation was on the Division 2 team and set the temp and dominate against Division 4 team.
"You’d have to credit Wexford in terms of how hard they worked. They probably out-worked us for large parts of the first half and only in the last 10 or 12 minutes of the first half we started breaking a couple of their kick-outs which got us a hold in the game."
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