This article is from page 93 of the 2007-04-03 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 93 JPG
LONDON in the league — not the game to set football pulses racing for Paidi O Sé or anyone associated with Clare. It meant this game was always going to be the undercard in the inter-county doubleheader at headquarters. ;
And so it was for Paidi O Sé who must have taken a few seconds out during the game to reflect life on the undercard when he has been used to topping the bill for over 30 years now.
Such was life in Cusack Park in a game that was nothing more than a fixture to be fulfilled for Clare, a game to try and rack up points and
goals to boost their scoring rate.
That’s what happened in this mis match. Clare could have won by 20 points but had to be content with a 13-point advantage when Chris Donnellan — brother of All-Ireland winner Michael — flashed home two goals in the final minutes.
It bothered Paidi, but not unduly as he reflected afterwards on a mis- sion accomplished. “Good win, good win,’ went his opening gambit.
“It was a very difficult game to prepare for. It was a game we had to win, score difference came into the equation as well but we didn’t look PAM LOTT MAA
“Certainly they didn’t play well in the second half and I can understand
that. It’s a difficult game to play. You have a game put away at half time and you go out and try to do it again in the second half and that was dif- ficult.
“We just wanted to get the game out of the way and play our remain- ing game, hoping that we can beat Longford,’ he added.
Longford in two weeks time in Pearse Stadium. Paidi’s successor as manager of Kerry, Jack O’Connor, went up there three years ago and came away with nothing. In victory over London, Paidi put it up to his players.
“The whole thing rests on the Longford game now,’ he said, “‘and that’s going to be good for the team. We just have to go out and win the bloody thing now and give us a chance to stay up.”
With that Paidi was away, still standing with Longford to come. With the long journey to Ventry ahead of him, he didn’t stay for all the hurling game, to find out that his footballers are the only Clare team still standing in the league.