No seats for Clare team at Shannon

THERE was some surprise around the county that the Clare hurling team didn’t fly from Shannon for the recent Fenway Hurling Classic in Boston.

Obviously Shannon was the logical place for them to fly out of, rather than Dublin, and with the Clare airport always looking for local support, having the county’s hurling team fly from there would have been appreciated.

However, although some members of the Limerick squad departed from Shannon, the Banner crossed the country to Dublin Airport, before boarding their flight to the States.

In a statement this week Aer Lingus, which sponsored flights for the competing teams, claimed that Clare had to go to Dublin because there had been a very high level of demand.

“Aer Lingus was delighted to partner with the Gaelic Players Association and GAA again, this year as a title sponsor, of the Aer Lingus Fenway Hurling Classic 2018 held at Boston’s iconic Fenway Park. We supported flights for the four teams participating Clare, Limerick, Cork and Wexford.

“We had planned to fly the Clare and Limerick teams from Shannon, as we had done as part of our 2017 sponsorship, however due to unprecedented support from both counties, there simply was not enough seats to accommodate the teams on the Shannon flights, as the flights were full of fans attending the games.”

The ‘hurling’ classic had a very different scoring format to what fans are used to, and Clare’s involvement ended at the first hurdle as they were defeated 42-37 by Cork, in a game televised by TG4.

A crowd of 12,674 attended last weekend’s games, less than half the number that attended in 2017.

 

Owen Ryan