JOE Hayes’ on-field input at Dr Cullen Park lasted all of 18 seconds. Carlow’s first attack culminated with corner-forward Derek Hayden contesting a dropping ball with the Lissycasey man.
Hayes punched the ball clear, leaving Hayden stretched on the ground in front of the Clare goalmouth. Clare appealed for a penalty but referee Damien Maher didn’t even award a free. He felt that the ball had been fairly contested. The Clare goalkeeper got to his feet but within seconds, he was clutching his shoulder.
“It was the first ball in. I had no choice but to go for it. I got my hands to it and I felt all right for a second but the minute I got up, the pain just shot into my arm. I knew there was no way I was going to be able to play on,” he told The Clare Champion afterwards.
Strapped up at that point, the Limerick-based garda has since learned his shoulder has been bruised and has sustained some soft-tissue damage.
Players never make good spectators and along with the Clare bench, Joe Hayes endured a tense 70 minutes before Michael O’Shea and Alan Clohessy kicked the late, dramatic winning scores.
“It didn’t look good. How many times have we seen Clare teams folding down through the years but the boys kept plugging away and closing the gap. The last three or four minutes were just unbelievable. It was a great finish, the goal to level it and the winning point from Claw Clohessy. No better man than ‘Claw’ to come up and kick that,” Hayes suggested.
Those involved were delighted with the win but clear in their belief that Clare hadn’t played particularly well in some sectors. They were noticeably poor at picking up breaking ball in the middle third of the field. At least they can now work on their weaknesses on the back of a second successive win.
“Can you imagine going in training on Tuesday night after losing the game and working on all of those things? This way, it’s going to be a bit livelier, going in working on things like winning more breaking ball. I’d like to see those statistics but I don’t think they were great for us. We had a few wides again as well but listen, we’ve two points going home and that’s the main thing. At the start of the day, that was the aim. ‘Come home with two points’ and we’re going home with them,” Hayes stated.
Now that Clare have won three of their four league games to date, every game they play is a must-win, starting with Leitrim on Sunday in Ennis.
“It has been a great week but nobody can get carried away. It’s back to the drawing board on Tuesday night. We’ve a big game next Sunday against Leitrim. All we have to do is keep focusing on the next game. That’s our goal at the moment; not looking too far ahead of ourselves and not looking back at the past,” the Clare number one maintained.
While he didn’t have a definite timeline on when he’ll be back between the posts, Hayes is hopeful that he might be available again inside a couple of weeks but it depends on how his injury responds to treatment this week.

Clare claw their way to dramatic win

Clare       1-12
Carlow     0-14
WHEN Alan Clohessy kicked Clare’s 12th point in the third minute of injury time, it was the first time they had taken the lead in Dr Cullen Park. Ten minutes from time, Carlow led 0-14 to 0-10 and Clare’s chances of even competing for promotion to Division 3 lay in near ruins.
To have any chance of wringing a result from their trip to the south-east, Clare needed a goal. Four minutes from time, Michael O’Shea delivered, benefiting from David Russell’s, David Tubridy’s and Gary Brennan’s approach work. Now at full-forward, Brennan showed both strength and grit to hold off Carlow full-back Paul McElligott before popping possession to the speeding O’Shea, who buried a superb goal. That levelled the score and Clare should have taken the lead in the first minute of injury time when Shane McGrath fisted wide from an excellent position. Players, management and supporters had their heads buried deep in their hands at that stage. A minute later, Rory Donnelly won and then, all too quickly, took a free near the halfway line. Unfortunately, his kick went straight to a Carlow man and Luke Dempsey’s team broke down field, convinced this was their chance to win it. Luckily for Clare, Seán Gannon kicked a very poor wide. The increasingly agitated Clare contingent were able to remove their heads from their hands for the second time inside a couple of minutes.
Just seconds later, Alan Clohessy landed a spectacular winning point after David Tubridy had again been involved in creating a crucial score. Under the circumstances, this was potentially a season-defining win for Clare. Carlow, in contrast, were devastated and several of their players lay on the ground unable to comprehend what had transpired.
At several stages, a Clare win looked about as likely as Carlow losing. The home county led 0-9 to 0-6 at half-time and were 0-13 to 0-8 up 17 minutes into the second half.
Two issues blighted Clare’s display until the final dramatic minutes. The Clare defence conceded a succession of scoreable frees with Martin McMahon, Graham Kelly and Laurence Healy all giving away frees that led to scores. Eight of Carlow’s total was kicked from dead balls, while a couple from play were created by quickly taken frees. This is an area Clare must work on eliminating from their game, while they must also come up with a way of securing a vastly increased percentage of breaking ball in the middle third of the field.
In the early seconds of the game, Joe Hayes sustained a shoulder injury contesting a high ball with Carlow’s Derek Hayden. Both received treatment but the Lissycasey goalkeeper had to be replaced by Kilmurry-Ibrickane’s Peter O’Dwyer.
Alan Clohessy, who had two reasonable first-half goal chances, David Tubridy, Michael O’Shea and Rory Donnelly scored Clare’s six first-half points, with all of them kicking crucial scores again in the second period.
When Clare were 0-13 to 0-8 down and running out of hope, Tubridy landed two sublime points within seconds of each other, 14 minutes from time, while Donnelly also notched two classy scores from play.
In some respects, Clare were lucky but they showed admirable courage to stick at it. Peter O’Dwyer was mostly solid in goals but Clare did lose six of their own kick-outs in-a-row in the second half. The fault for that isn’t all down to the goalkeeper but communication on kick-outs is something Clare will concentrate on this week if Joe Hayes is definitely ruled out.
With Shane McNeilus absent due to a leg injury, Martin McMahon was moved to the full-back line. He had some good moments but most defenders struggled at stages with JJ Smith and Derek Hayden tricky opponents. As mentioned earlier, Clare’s tackling will have to improve close to goal, although two of the frees they gave away were soft.
Midfield was a problem area for Clare for most of the game with very few midfielders, half-forwards or half-backs winning breaking ball. Ger Quinlan was replaced by Niall Browne at half-time with the O’Curry’s man carrying a hamstring.
Tubridy, Donnelly and O’Shea scored 1-9 between them in the full-forward line, while team captain Clohessy chipped in with a critical 0-3 from wing-forward.
David Russell was introduced nine minutes from time, a move that could have benefited Clare even more if he had been brought on earlier, while perhaps Timmy Ryan could have introduced as a target man on the edge of the square. Gary Brennan was central to setting up the goal in that role, when he was moved to full-forward.
Still let’s not nit-pick too much. This was a tremendous win and Clare’s promotional fate rests in their own camp.

Clare: Joe Hayes (Lissycasey); Barry Hartnett (Meelick), Laurence Healy (Ennistymon); Martin McMahon (Kilmurry-Ibrickane); Graham Kelly (St Joseph’s, Miltown), Gordon Kelly (St Joseph’s, Miltown), John Hayes (Kilrush); Gary Brennan (Clondegad), Ger Quinlan (O’Curry’s); Shane Brennan (Clondegad), Shane McGrath (Thomas Davis), Alan Clohessy (Liscannor, captain), Michael O’Shea (Kilkee), David Tubridy (Doonbeg), Rory Donnelly (Cooraclare).
Subs: Peter O’Dwyer (Kilmurry-Ibrickane) for Joe Hayes (3 minutes, injured), Niall Browne (Two Mile House, Kildare) for Ger Quinlan (half-time), Thomas Donnellan (Cooraclare) for Graham Kelly (45min, injured), David Russell (Kilkee) for Shane Brennan (61min).
Scorers: David Tubridy (0-5, 0-2f), Michael O’Shea (1-1), Rory Donnelly and Alan Clohessy (0-3 each).
Wides: 7; Frees won: 25; 45s: 1
Yellow cards: Graham Kelly and Martin McMahon.

Carlow: Trevor O’Reilly; Barry John Molloy, Paul McElligott, Pádraig Murphy; Brendan Kavanagh, Shane Redmond, Tony Bolger; Brendan Murphy, John Murphy; Brian Murphy, Paul Reid, Ed Finnegan; Derek Hayden, Seán Gannon and JJ Smith.
Subs: Darragh Foley for John Murphy (18mins, injured), Daniel St Ledger for Derek Hayden (66mins, injured), David Mulvaney for Pádraig Murphy (70mins).
Scorers: JJ Smith (0-6, 0-4f), Brian Murphy (0-4f), Paul Reid (0-2), John Murphy, Derek Hayden (0-1 each).
Wides: 5; Frees won: 26; 45s: 0.
Yellow cards: Brendan Murphy, Tony Bolger, Darragh Foley, Paul Reid and Pádraig Murphy.
Referee: Damien Maher (Westmeath).