This article is from page 98 of the 2008-05-27 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 98 JPG
IF any Clare footballer was in doubt about what was expected of him on Sunday, he need only have looked at the number written on his arm. Be- fore the game, Clare decided to em- broider each jersey with ‘100%’ to represent the effort required.
A second championship defeat to Waterford in 12 months was unthink- able for Clare and though they skated perilously close to the edge, Clare managed to find a way through, to the relief of manager Frank Doherty.
“To be honest I’m just delighted to get over this hurdle because after last year, we needed to win’, said Doher- ty on the sideline afterwards.
“It was a morale booster to the county as such. We needed that go- ing forward, because if we had lost today, it probably would have driv- en Clare football back another bit. We’ ve had enough of knocks over the last few months, so hopefully this is a step in the right direction.
“Clare was a year waiting for this day to come. Them lads were hurt- ing over last year. Obviously I wasn’t there but I know what they went through, because when you lose a championship game you hurt. I knew they would keep going.”
Clare operated well below the re- quired mark for long periods and while rejecting the effect of the swirling breeze, Doherty acknowl- edged Clare’s shooting wasn’t up to
Nore te
“Tl tell you the truth. This whole breeze stuff I don’t believe in. Some- times teams play better against the breeze. We were knocking ball into our forwards in the first half and it was running away from them. We
were using the breeze too much. I felt if we carried the ball more directly and ran at them, and had overlaps and then kicked the ball, it would hold for our forward, and it would be a disad- vantage to the Waterford backs.
“We were shooting erratically at
times. It was decent enough ball go- ing in, but it was coming out just as fast. We had to cool things down.” Yet, for his first championship win as an intercounty manager, Doherty took heart from the way his team – particularly the younger members,
– stood up when it mattered.
“David Connole was man of the match in my opinion today. He’s only 18, he’s doing the Leaving Cert and he’s an absolutely fantastic young lad. I said the whole time that I’d love to play either him or Gordon Kelly at six. When David came out to six, it CHUN DE (orem Neto 8 ee
Doherty also thanked Waterford manager for his pre-match com- ments, damning the state of Clare football.
“I’m delighted with Kiely, with all his nice words during the week about Clare football. I didn’t have to say too much and I do appreciate his words of wisdom, fair play to him.”
Kerry, the All-Ireland champions, are now in Doherty’s sight-lines.
“It will be a privilege to the young- er lads. It’s going to help their game playing against the best team in Ire- land,” said Doherty
‘As far as ’’m concerned, you could pick the best players in Ireland and they wouldn’t beat Kerry. We’ll go down there and we have nothing to fear. We’ll go out and we’ll give it a lash, we’ll try our best and it will be great experience for the younger lads – for next year in Division 4 and that’s what we’re building on.”
No prizes for guessing what will be required in Killarney. Just think of a number and double it.