Carr says damage was done early

Ross Carr was left to rue Down’s sluggish start after their Ulster SFC semi-final defeat to Armagh at Clones.

"Once again the trouble was done in the first 20 minutes when we didn’t get out of the blocks again," the Mourne County surpremo said.

"And unfortunately this time we weren’t good enough to come back. We finished the last 10 minutes of the first half very well but you can’t afford to miss frees at this level.

Carr refused to use the loss of centre back Liam Doyle to a first half injury as an excuse and insisted that there hadn’t been a hangover from the quarter-final replay win over Tyrone.

"Losing Liam was a factor but that might be papering over other cracks," he said.

"I’m not too sure how long the qualifiers are going but Down do not have a good track record. So we will soon see how much we have matured as a unit.

"I know we didn’t get carried away with the Tyrone game and went into this focused but now we have to see how well we handle defeat."