CLARE captain Alan Clohessy readily acknowledged it was a nervous finish. “It was nervous from the middle of the second half. We made hard work of it but we got there. It’s great to be able to say we are in a Munster final but there is little point in going there just to play in it. We want to try and win it and help put Clare football back on the map.”

According to the Liscannor man, Clare’s target was to get the first score of the second half which they managed. “But we let it slip. We didn’t get enough breaks around midfield. We didn’t get the ball into the boys in the full-forward line and we knew if we could, we could do damage. There is no question about that as you saw in the first half.”

Understandably, he was pleased with the first-half performance. “We played some of our best football in the first half. The work we had done in the first half we didn’t want to waste it. Limerick tightened up a lot in the second half and they put a man back to cut off the ball going into Tubs and Rory.”

According to the team skipper, “They [Limerick] also broke the ball from Gary. They got wise to that after the way he caught early ball in the first half. They were keeping everything away from him. We got sloppy on breaks and they capitalised and exposed our full-back line and there wasn’t much we could do. The quality of Ian Ryan and Ger Collins caused us a lot of problems.”

“We have a month to work on these things ahead of final. Today, the only target was to beat Limerick and we weren’t thinking of anything else. We have managed that. We made hard work of it but we got there and now we can start working for the final,” Clohessy concluded.

 

McDermott breathes again after a hectic evening

SOMEBODY should have pulled up a chair for Micheál McDermott. He definitely needed a rest having won his first championship game as Clare manager. Clare had just won their first championship match since 2008 and their first over Limerick since 1984. Their win wasn’t exactly seamless though. First-half dominance was followed by a near total second-half collapse.

Some Clare supporters likened viewing the second half to watching a car accident in slow motion. They could see it happening but couldn’t intervene. As manager, it was as if McDermott was driving a speeding Honda Civic he just couldn’t establish control over. That is, not until David Tubridy intervened and steered Clare into their first Munster final for a dozen years.

“Difficult. Very, very difficult,” is how McDermott painted his memories of the last 35 minutes of the 70 he spent prowling the Mackey Stand sideline.

“Even as regards getting subs on the pitch, the pressure of that last 10 minutes was phenomenal. Every sort of feeling is going through your body. Are we going to lose it? Are we going to draw it or are we going to win it? Thank God at the end of everything, we came out with the win. But it was really, really hard work on the sideline,” he revealed.

Hard to believe but McDermott never thought Clare were going to lose even as Limerick reeled in their 10-point advantage.

“No. I thought maybe with four or five minutes to go, it would end up in a draw. But the right people in the right places got the ball for us. Players who can handle pressure. I’m delighted for the players mostly because they put in a savage 70 minutes. People would have looked at the first half and said we were absolutely awesome. But to keep up that momentum for the second half was tough. You look at Gary [Brennan] in the middle of the field, he hasn’t trained for four weeks. But he just battled and battled there for 70 minutes,” the Clare manager pointed out.

“Even the subs that came in contributed and David Tubridy kicked some unbelievable scores in the end to win that match. It’s a reward for hard work to get to a Munster final. We’ve come up short in so many games over my time here in management. If you look at Down last year, every time we come out it seems to be heartache. It just feels good I have to say,” he smiled.

He feels Limerick upped their game considerably in the second period.

“They dominated the breaking ball, they got crucial scores and their full-forward line were really on form. But we hung in, we battled and we got scores at crucial times,” he felt.
Now Clare have three weeks from this weekend to prepare for a Munster final meeting with Cork in Limerick.

“A Munster final is not about an occasion. A Munster final is about trying to win it. We know we’ve a huge, huge task against Cork. But we’re going to go in there and try our best,” McDermott concluded before heading off to seek somewhere quiet to sit or perhaps even lie down for a few minutes.