{"id":263094,"date":"2026-01-25T10:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T10:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/263094\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T10:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T10:37:07","slug":"brennan-laments-dubs-lack-of-energy-in-first-half","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/263094\/","title":{"rendered":"Brennan laments Dubs’ ‘lack of energy’ in first half"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dublin boss Ger Brennan was left to rue a poor opening half in their Allianz League Division 1 loss to Donegal but praised how his players fought back in the second period.<\/p>\n

Beaten All-Ireland finalists Donegal led by six points, 1-09 to 0-06, at half time, but the hosts at Croke Park narrowed the margin back to three at the final whistle.<\/p>\n

Brennan, who took charge of the Dubs last August, admitted that the Ulster side deserved their victory.<\/p>\n

“A game of two halves,” the former Dublin defender, who handed league debuts to four starters and a substitute, told RT\u00c9 Sport after the 1-20 to 0-20 loss<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I guess the first half we lacked a lot of energy, we stood off Donegal. They played the game on their terms and credit to them.<\/p>\n

“They were excellent at what they did.<\/p>\n

“They cut us open on numerous occasions and we really couldn’t get our hands on the ball.<\/p>\n

“I think we gave the ball away seven times in a row during that first half and that just gave the impetus to Donegal.<\/p>\n

\"
\nPaddy Small has an effort on goal<\/p>\n

“They’re very accurate in front of the posts.<\/p>\n

“There was a quick chat at half-time there with the group, maybe the few nerves that may have been there, I think they were gone and the fellas knew that there was a lot more in them.<\/p>\n

“So delighted in how the guys did in the second half.<\/p>\n

“They learned, they pushed on and we got it back to a goal.<\/p>\n

“But having only played for 35 minutes to be within three points, against the All-Ireland finalists, happy but things to work on.<\/p>\n

“If we performed in the second half with a similar energy to the first, you’d be quite worried.<\/p>\n

“There’d be bigger problems there to probably try to unearth.<\/p>\n

“We might have to get a couple of psychologists in if that was the case.<\/p>\n

“But thankfully, we can see when the lads are tuned in and they back themselves that they can be quite competitive with the best.”<\/p>\n

Dublin face Mayo next weekend.<\/p>\n

Brennan added: “Donegal are the standard along with Kerry and a couple of other teams that Dublin are trying to close the gap on.<\/p>\n

“We’ll just have to try and start better now in Castlebar next weekend.”<\/p>\n

\"24<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Donegal manager Jim McGuinness (above), who had just seven of the team that lost to Kerry in the All-Ireland final, said it was a mixed performance from his charges.<\/p>\n

“It was good and bad,” said McGuinness, whose side host Kerry next Sunday.<\/p>\n

“There was a lot of positives – any day you come to Dublin and you win it’s a good day, I suppose, but we’ve a lot of tidying up to do as well.<\/p>\n

“Dublin were very good in the second half on their own kick-out They overloaded their strong side and got a lot of bodies in that area and asked a lot of questions of us.<\/p>\n

“They went very direct in the second half and their scoring efficiency was very high. We were struggling to stem the tide.<\/p>\n

“Overall, I think it’s the first 70 minutes for a lot of the lads.<\/p>\n

“You are kind of managing minutes throughout the pre-season and trying to give everyone a go at it and that’s probably a good blast for them tonight.”<\/p>\n

Watch Allianz League Sunday from 9.30pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow a live blog on all matches on the RT\u00c9 News App and on rte.ie\/sport. Listen to Sunday Sport on RT\u00c9 Radio 1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dublin boss Ger Brennan was left to rue a poor opening half in their Allianz League Division 1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-263094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}