Pitch switch and defeat

NOT a good week for Clare football. First off, Cusack Park was the only county grounds in Ireland that wasn’t able to stage the opening game of the NFL for weather-related reasons. Fifteen of the 16 league games were played in the stadiums they were fixed for. Cusack Park was the odd venue out. Ennis has had significant rain in recent weeks but presumably so have other counties.

While the Clare footballers didn’t deliver in Miltown, the fact that the game had to be moved underlines that Clare GAA hasn’t delivered on the facilities front either. The footballers had to train last week in Mungret and had Corofin GAA to thank for providing them with a training pitch for most of December and much of January.

Caherlohan is being developed but Clare lag behind significantly at the moment when it comes to accessing training facilities in their own county.

As for the Clare-Waterford game in Miltown, Mick O’Dwyer pointed to a number of critical missed scoring opportunities.

“Young [Shane] McGrath got two great chances and kicked the two of them 10 yards wide. The midfielder, [Cathal] O’Connor, kicked two terrible wides as well. If you’re getting those chances and not putting them away, well then you’re not entitled to win,” O’Dwyer said.

“We had plenty of chances there in the finish. We kicked five wides, one after another. We had lots of chances and we didn’t take them. When you don’t take chances you’re not entitled to win. It was disappointing that we didn’t win that one today but we had the opportunities, there’s no question or doubt about that. We kicked some woeful wides,” the Clare manager added.

He also pointed to Waterford’s midfield dominance as a major factor in deciding the result.

“They dominated the game, all the way through, in the middle of the field. We weren’t getting the breaks there either. They had a couple of big men who were catching great ball. It makes a difference winning around the middle of the field and they did that. We were looking good at half-time but, in fairness to Waterford, they had a good level of fitness in the second half. They ran at us well and they kicked some good scores,” O’Dwyer, who was overseeing his first Clare league game, acknowledged.

He feels Clare may have to look at their training programme.

“We didn’t seem a bit sharp in the second half. We seemed to die. That’s exactly what happened. We didn’t seem to have a level of fitness. Still, we got opportunities and we didn’t kick them. We’ll have to practice more kicking and more football. That’s what’s needed,” he asserted.

Such was Waterford’s professionalism, they stayed in the Armada Hotel on Saturday night. The decision to switch the game from Cusack Park to Miltown was made on Friday.

“We were going to stay in Miltown Malbay anyway because we thought it might be switched with all of the rain in Ennis,” Waterford manager Niall Carew said.

The former Kildare mentor was unimpressed with Waterford’s first-half display, when they had the aid of the breeze.

“All I was looking for was a performance. We didn’t get that in the first half. We were too cautious and we let Clare come at us. We seemed to play a sweeper system for the full 70 minutes, which wasn’t the plan at all,” Carew revealed.

“We got into it then and it was easy to throw caution to the wind in the second half. Three or four of the boys stepped it up, which they had to. I felt they were just along for the ride more than anything. When you have 15 lads then pulling together, you have a chance then,” the victorious Waterford manager concluded.