IN all of her years representing Banner Ladies and Clare, Emma O’Driscoll has never been so close to playing in an All-Ireland senior club final. The Clare, Munster B and Munster A champions are just one hour from qualifying for the biggest day ladies club football has to offer. Their thrilling one-point defeat of St Val’s from Cork in the Munster A final, three weeks ago, qualified The Banner for Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final. The Niamh O’Dea-captained team will play Monaghan, Ulster and reigning All-Ireland champions, Donaghmoyne, in Corofin at 1.30pm and are hoping that a huge crowd will travel to North Clare to roar them on. “I think this is a game that we will get a few neutrals at and our own county colleagues will come too and, hopefully, some of the girls from other clubs,” the Kildysart National School teacher told The Clare Champion.   “People who have any interest in Clare ladies football might come. It’s very …

EOIN Cleary had the look of a man who needed a power-hose to remove the stains of battle from his frame. Caked from head to foot in the residue of his own field and soaked to the skin, Cleary wasn’t concerned about that. Yet to re-enter the Miltown dressing room, he was on a lifetime high. “Words can’t describe it. On our own pitch with the crowd behind us, it’s the best day of my life to be honest. With your family and friends, this is just unbelievable,” is how he put it. “The whole town is behind us. Twelve months ago, we were fighting relegation and there wasn’t a sinner in Cooraclare. To have the whole town behind us is unbelievable,” Cleary marvelled. The supply of ball into Cleary and his attacking partner, Seánie Malone, helped them to wreak havoc at stages throughout the game. Although Cleary, jokingly, suggested he is getting bored with Seánie following him around all …

St Joseph’s Miltown 1-8 Currow (Kerry) 1-7 STEELY resolve, ice-cool temperament and bouts of flowing football edged Miltown Malbay into the Munster Intermediate Club Football Championship final on Sunday week. Playing in front of a crowd of 1,050 people in Miltown, the home club started superbly and led 0-6 to 0-0 after 23 minutes. While the Kerry intermediate champions kicked six wides in the opening half, they could not match Miltown’s fluency, support play and all-round work rate for all but the last seven minutes of the half. Deploying Eoin Curtin as an extra defender worked exceptionally well for Miltown. Curtin’s reading of the game in the opening half was flawless. He cut out several Currow through balls and afforded his full-back line reliable protection, while Curtin’s distribution and support play was also very impressive on a difficult day for football, considering the weekend rainfall and tricky breeze. Down field, Eoin Cleary showed his class in the third minute when …

  Youghal 1-16 Whitegate 0-8 WHEN Ian Fahy was ruled out with appendicitis, it represented a serious blow to Whitegate, and while they stayed in contention for a long time, the Cork side were rampant in the final quarter. At least two more Whitegate players had been sick in the run up to the game, but in fairness Youghal were short two regular starters and had been missing four for the draw. Sunday was a terrible day in Fermoy, heavy rain falling both before and all the way through the match, although the pitch held up as well as could be expected. Speaking afterwards, Whitegate manager David Considine said he didn’t want to put the defeat down to the poor health of some of his charges. “I don’t want to be making excuses, we hurled as hard as we could,” he said. The first half was quite even and entertaining with some very good spells of hurling. Whitegate, who actually …

By Seamus Hayes Eleven years after their last title win, Sixmilebridge are back as Clare senior hurling champions. At rain lashed Cusack Park on Sunday, they dethroned champions Newmarket in a fiercely competitive tie. The final scoreline of 1-10 to 0-11 is an accurate reflection of a tie which produced some great hurling despite the atrocious conditions. The winners had a dream start when top scorer Niall Gilligan scored the game’s only goal as early as the second minute when he drilled a penalty to the net following a foul on Alan Mulready. From here they held the lead until two minutes from the break when Colin Ryan levelled. The holders hit the last five points of the half to move from being three in arrears to holding a two point lead at the break, 0-9 to 1-4. A hungrier Sixmilebridge returned for the second half and they held their neighbours and great rivals scoreless for twenty six minutes during which …

By Seamus Hayes An outstanding performance from team captain David Tubridy steered Doonbeg to a three point win (0-15 to 0-12) over Lissycasey in the second of the Clare senior football championship semi-finals on Saturday. The win on a Kilmihil pitch that held up remarkably well considering the continuous rainfall before and during the game means that they will play Cratloe in next Saturday’s final. This was Tubridy’s day and the Clare star kicked ten of his side’s fifteen points. Tubridy’s display allied to a powerful third quarter when they scored 0-6 without reply, turned the tables on a young Lissycasey outfit that had started impressively and raced into a 0-4 to 0-1 lead after ten minutes. Another key factor in the magpies victory was the introduction of Shane O’Brien for the second half. The dual player came in at centre forward and he helped create a number of the winner’s second half scores on a day when Colm Dillon was …

THE selection of eight members of Clare’s All-Ireland winning hurling side on the 2013 All-Stars team has rounded off a memorable year for the Banner County David McInerney, Brendan Bugler, Pat Donnellan, Colm Galvin, Conor Ryan, Tony Kelly, Podge Collins and Conor McGrath have been named on the team, which is completed by three players each from Cork and Dublin and one from the Munster champions, Limerick. The awards will be presented at a function in Croke Park this Friday night, when the identity of both the senior and young hurler of the year will also be revealed. The young player award is certainly in the bag for Clare, as the only nominees are Tony Kelly, Podge Collins and David McInerney.  Kelly and Collins are also in the running for the senior award, along with Cork goalie Anthony Nash. The players make the choice of player of the year. The number of Clare men named in this year’s team equals …

Whitegate 0-18 Youghal 0-18 (AET) NO-ONE really thinks November hurling is a great idea. It evokes images of water-logged pitches and scrappy, uninspiring matches but sometimes things don’t work out that way at all, like on Sunday, when Youghal and Whitegate produced a really entertaining clash in Sixmilebridge. Credit is due to the East Clare side for showing great character and fitness the day after achieving their goal for 2013, toppling Feakle in the county final. On Sunday, their year looked as good as over when they trailed by 0-8 to 0-4 at half-time, Youghal having scored the last seven points of the half. It seemed that even if the Whitegate spirit was willing, surely fatigue would make a comeback impossible. However, come back they did and with Brendan Bugler and George Waterstone shining, they were within seconds of producing an unlikely victory, before Youghal’s Damien Ring hit an immense free from his own half, which forced extra time. Again …

By Seamus Hayes Clare senior hurling champions Newmarket are one game away from retaining the Canon Hamilton trophy. Before a big attendance at Clarecastle—the game was transferred from Cusack Park following heavy overnight rain on Saturday night —they had to pull out all the stops to overcome Ballyea in a hard fought contest. At the end of the opening half the teams were level at 0-6 to 1-3 with the game’s only goal coming in the twenty first minute when Gary Brennan turned a Paul Flanagan delivery into the Newmarket net. Newmarket’s greater experience came to the fore in the second half and within a minute of the resumption they had taken a two point lead and they remained in front from here to the end. Clare’s top scorer in 2013 was to the fore for the Blues, hitting o-8, all from frees. Shane O’Brien senior who, along with Ronan Goode, helped Doonbeg progress to the senior football semi-final on the …

By Seamus Hayes Whitegate will be playing senior hurling in 2014 after their three point win over Feakle in the intermediate hurling championship final played at Sixmilebridge on Saturday. The win ended a four year wait to return to the senior ranks for the East Clare side captained by Clare’s All-Ireland winning star, Brendan Bugler. Ahead by a point at half time, 0-7 to 0-6, Whitegate found themselves a point behind two minutes into the new half after Oisin Donnellan had goaled for Feakle. There was a strong response from Whitegate and Ian Fahy hit 1-1 in the space of a minute to give his team a lead they would hold to the finish. They have little time to celebrate, however, as they return to Sixmilebridge on this Sunday to face Cork champions Youghal in the Munster intermediate championship semi-final.       Sixmilebridge reach senior final Sixmilebridge qualified for the Clare senior final when they accounted for Clonlara in …

CLARECASTLE will host one of the most eagerly awaited games of the 2013 Clare Senior Football Championship when Cratloe and Éire Óg meet in the county semi-final on Sunday. Perhaps it should be rephrased slightly as ‘one of the most eagerly awaited games of this week’. Since the football championship re-started after the All-Ireland hurling final, there has been a desperate rush to get it over with. The same applies to the club hurling, which shows the GAA’s prerogative lies with the inter-county scene. Still, the winners of this game won’t worry about the big picture. They won’t have time, as the county final is scheduled for the following weekend. It seems like another age when Éire Óg knocked reigning champions Kilmurry Ibrickane out of the championship on September 15 in Kilmihil. Their 2-5 to 0-10 win reverberated around Clare football for a day or two but has been all but forgotten about since. Had Éire Óg another game within …

Cratloe 2-6 Kilrush 0-7 NOWHERE near as fluent as in their 11-point defeat of Cooraclare a week earlier, Cratloe did enough to hold off a limited Kilrush and secure a county semi-final place against Éire Óg in Clarecastle on Sunday. Kilrush set themselves up to limit Cratloe’s attacking options and to close the space into which they sought to run. To a degree, this policy worked, in that it kept Kilrush competitive. Yet only Jim Young, of Kilrush’s forwards, managed even a single point from play. The Kilrush free-taker kicked five points from dead balls, while early substitute Paddy Clancy was their only additional point scorer. Playing with a strong breeze in the opening half in Clarecastle on Sunday, Cratloe were somewhat lucky to lead 1-4 to 0-2 at half time. Ten minutes before half time, a long delivery from Seán Collins evaded Kilrush goalkeeper Tony Burke and dropped in. Fergal Lynch, playing at full-forward, had made a run that …

THE Clare County Board’s protracted efforts to re-fix the Cooraclare v Doonbeg senior football championship quarter-final had, at the time of going to press on Wednesday evening, failed to find a solution. The game was due to be played last Monday at 2pm in Kilmihil but Cooraclare did not field as one of their players, Enda Considine, father’s funeral mass was at 12noon in Cree on the same day. Had the game gone ahead, it would have been Cooraclare’s third senior football championship match in eight days. They had to wait 78 days between their first and second-round fixtures. Once it became clear that Doonbeg were not about to accept a walkover or hand over a signed team sheet to match referee Michael Talty, the football championship timetable was thrown into chaos. Had Doonbeg submitted a team sheet to the match official, it is likely that the county board would have awarded the game to the Magpies and, in their …

WHILE currently concentrating on Cratloe’s county senior football semi-final meeting with Éire Óg in Clarecastle on Sunday, Seán and Podge Collins would ideally like to play both codes for Clare in 2014, if feasible. Along with clubmates Cathal McInerney, Liam Markham and Conor Ryan, they have played football for Clare at every underage level from U-14. Community centres in Lissycasey, Kilmihil and Cooraclare were packed on Monday night for the visit of Liam MacCarthy, who was escorted by the Collins brothers, Brendan Bugler and Louis Mulqueen. Speaking before he left Cooraclare, Seán said he would love to give inter-county football a crack, if possible, particularly as his father, Colm, has been confirmed as manager on a three-year term. “I have always had a huge interest in football, as much as I have in hurling. I go to as many club matches as I would hurling. If it was possible, it is something I’d love to do. But whether it’s physically …

WHEN is an apparent walkover not a walkover? Possibly when the team benefiting from said walkover won’t come out of the dressing room and say they don’t want it anyway. Although the majority of people parking their cars in the Kilmihil GAA Club car park must have been aware that their visit would be a short one, they were keen to witness what turned out to be a rather intriguing non-event. Anybody who arrived in Kilmihil unaware that Cooraclare were not showing up would have realised that something was up when their entrance to the car park was free and, more significantly, when they detected the absence of county board gate checkers. Doonbeg warmed up for their quarter-final against Cooraclare as if they were certain their neighbours were doing likewise at the far end of the field, on what was a wintry late October day. Knots of curious supporters from several clubs, including Doonbeg and Cooraclare, indulged in whispered conversations …