This article is from page 92 of the 2009-12-01 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 92 JPG
TEAM trainer Ger Lawlor wasn’t looking to hear any talk of moral victories or hard luck stories, but you know deep down he felt that this was an opportunity lost.
The seven point differential didn’t tell the story of this Munster final, of that he was convinced, albeit he didn’t really say so directly in his post-match reflections.
“We were back in it when it was down to two points. They were hav- ing a real go but they came back and hit some great points near the end,’ he said.
“If we had got a goal in the second- half we could have won this Munster title. We had them under the cosh. We took them on but at times were afraid to take them on and we went for a few impossible scores when we could have worked our way in more towards goal,” he added.
Mention of goal and he came to Spa’s goal, but at either end of the first-half that represented the two biggest hammer blows to Cratloe’s hopes of becoming the first side to win a Munster intermediate title.
“We gave them too much respect starting off. We stood off them too much in the first ten, 15 minutes of the game.
“We let them get the ball first, showing too much respect for them
– whether it was because they were from Kerry, I don’t know. You can’t do that with a team from Kerry and they punished us with that first goal that meant we had a terrible start. “They’re natural footballers” – they’re playing football since they’re out of the cradle and they’ll punish you if you give them too much space as we did at the start. The goal before half-time really killed us. We should
have only been two points down at half-time.
“But you have to admire our lads. They showed great determination and heart. They never gave up and you couldn’t ask them for any more. They’re unbelieveable. They’re great. A credit to their club and credit to their families.
They all stood up in that first-half when coming back and again in the
second-half.
“It was always going to be very hard to recover from five down but we brought it back to two again and with seven or eight minutes to go I really thought that we could kick on ANG MY eU0mHsom BLO loe
“We were playing the better foot- ball and they were getting very edgy, but it wasn’t to be when they kicked a few points.”