Garland: Farney hurlers not panicking after sluggish start

WHILE Monaghan have lost both of their league encounters so far this season, sharpshooter Niall Garland insists they aren’t panicking just yet and are working hard to improve their results.

Louth and Fermanagh both got one over their Farney rivals at the start of the Division Four campaign, but Monaghan are keen to bounce back when they take on Warwickshire in Clones this weekend.

“We’ve had a tough start, but it’s not panic stations,” said Garland. “They were two tough games, and we still got plenty out of them. There’s nothing won in February so you take what you can from them and there’s plenty to work on.

“The likes of our discipline needs to improve and our scoring rate needs to improve, but we addressed those issues straight away and Saturday is another chance to rectify them and it’s another step on the journey.”

Warwickshire are yet to win a game either, losing twice and drawing once, but have hit six goals across their three games. Their goal-scoring ability hasn’t been lost on Garland, who insists Monaghan will have to expose their weaknesses.

“Like all the English teams, they’re obviously good but they’re very hard to analyse,” he added. “Their team is liable to change a lot from year to year so it’s a tough one to judge but they’re always physical and they’re always strong.

“They’re always mad for goals as well which is something that we need to be wary of. Along with trying to get scores ourselves, we have to be wary of the threat that they pose at the other end of the field.

“They’re big men which is a bit unlike us, we’d be mainly small, and they usually use that to their advantage. They use their power; they have good runners coming from deep like Jack Grealish, I think he’s in midfield this year.

“He’s been there a number of years and he’s a serious player for them.

“They know how to use their strengths and the fact that they have scored so many goals and still not won, we have to make sure we stop their strengths, but we need to punish them too.

“There does seem to be a bit of a weakness in their team in terms of conceding, so we need to make sure that we work on that weakness and develop our own confidence in front of the goal as well.”