Tag Archives: football

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 …

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 …

By Peter O’Connell BEFORE they head for Sunday’s senior football second round game against Cratloe in Gurteen at 1pm, Cooraclare might have to indulge in some football recognition trials. Will they recognise a size five football when they see one? Cooraclare have played just one championship match this year, defeating Kilrush in Labasheeda on August 3. Since then, they have played no competitive football at all. Cratloe haven’t played any senior football either since beating Kilmurry Ibrickane in their opening championship fixture. Of course, they have hardly been able to lay down their hurleys for more than a day or two, with six Cratloe players part of Clare’s All-Ireland senior winning panel, with Podge Collins and Enda Boyce also in the All-Ireland U-21 winning squad. Throw in two rounds of senior club hurling over the last two weekends and an U-21 Football Championship fixture on Monday of this week and it’s fairly clear that Cratloe haven’t been idle. Whether they …

Banner Ladies 6-24 Liscannor 1-4 FIRST off, let’s acknowledge the speed, skill level and fluency of the Banner Ladies’ first-half display. The champions played sublime football in the opening 30 minutes as they careered through Liscannor, establishing a 5-13 to 0-2 lead. While the huge Liscannor following in Cooraclare would understandably not concur, it was worth the admission fee to witness the imaginative, free-flowing excellence of Niamh O’Dea, Gráinne Nolan, Aoife Keane and Naomi Carroll. They played the game at a pace armed with precision and movement that Liscannor could not live with. Of course, it was very disappointing that the senior ladies football county final was so desperately one-sided. Saturday evening was perfect for football. The pitch was in top-class condition, the crowd sizeable and the Ladies Gaelic Football Association was represented by national president Pat Quill. Everything was set but the gulf between the competing teams was far too wide for any hope of a relatively even contest. …

THE losers of the Clondegad v Wolfe Tones second round losers game on Sunday in Clarecastle will have to face into playing a relegation semi-final against Liscannor. That stark fact will be to the forefront of both clubs thinking ahead of Sunday’s game, which has been held up for several weeks. Wolfe Tones cited the absence of Aaron Cunningham, due to his senior hurling commitments, as the reason why they couldn’t play, while at a county board meeting earlier this summer, Clondegad pointed to the fact that Tony Kelly and Paul Flanagan are also tied up with the senior hurlers. Clondegad lost their first round game to Éire Óg while Wolfe Tones were comprehensively beaten by Kilkee. It’s difficult to predict a winner given that neither club has any recent form line to go on. However, Wolfe Tones have more experience of playing senior football and perhaps that might edge the result in their favour. The prize for the winners …