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London's mountain to climb

London manager Noel Dunning believes the Exiles will be better prepared to face Galway having learnt much from last years defeat at the hands of Sligo. By Damian Dolan - 21/05/09

Twelve months ago, London were rocked by an early penalty miss and the simultaneous loss of the influential Kevin Waldron. Unable to recover, Sligo were able to pull away on the scoreboard and ease to a comfortable victory.

However, the Exiles boss, preparing for his fifth crack at securing what would be only London’s second Connacht Championship win, is confident that the Exiles are mentally far stronger to deal with any early set-backs this time around.

“I think they’ve learned a lot from last year and especially from the league this year,” Dunning told The Irish World. “The first four or five league games this year we learnt that we are well able to compete at that level.

“Compared to this time last year, we’re a lot wiser and for a change we have a lot of the players available to us that played against Sligo last year. We’ll have learned from that for this year so hopefully the same thing won’t happen again. If we get off to a good start we’ll be looking to sustain it for the full 70 minutes.”

A good start will be essential for London if they are to keep pace with last years All-Ireland quarter-finalists and even contemplate pulling off what would be one of Gaelic footballs greatest upsets. Dunning, however, is far too long in the tooth to get carried away by ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ preferring to focus on coaxing a performance from his London panel.

“You look for a performance first, that has to be right before you can even think about a result. Performance is the key; a lot of different ingredients go into a performance but if you get all those ingredients right on the day then you can start looking towards the result, but not until then,” said Dunning.

For more on this story, see this weeks edition of The Irish World