This article is from page 75 of the 2011-06-21 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 75 JPG
DURING the week Kevin Kennedy memorably likened himself to Giovanni Trappatoni when talking about players who declined an offer to throw their lot in with his county intermediate side.
But just as Trappatoni’s travails with the likes Anthony Stokes, James McCarthy and enfant terrible Stephen Ireland never got him down, so it was with Kevin Kennedy in his stewardship of what he called “the unglamorous team of Clare hurling”.
And just as some reward came to Trappatoni recently, so it did to Kennedy in this Munster semi-final as those who answered his call have brought the county to within 60 minutes of an historic first ever provincial title at intermediate level.
“The fellas that were playing today are the fellas I want for the final,” said Kennedy in the first flush of victory, hinting that there won’t be too many more invitations handed out to the stay-away bunch.
“I can tell you that much, because when we were playing challenge matches on wet evenings in Gort, Clareabbey and places like that, these are the players who wanted to come out to play for Clare as this level. We had one chance at this, one chance to get to a Munster final.”
That they did it in such decsisive fashion wasn’t beyond Kennedy’s wildest expectations, but he expected it to be closer against a Cork team that had beaten Tipperary in the semi-final by 2-16 to 2-12 in the quarter-final.
“I knew if we got our defence right for this game we’d have a great chance,” he reflected. “We had the defence right and things followed from there. We knew we had the forwards to get scores and they did that by putting up 2-19. That’s a good score, a very good score.
“We’re learning all the time. We learned today that the defence we picked was up to it. Patrick Kelly was absolutely outstanding at full-back – time and time again the came out of defence with the ball, especially in the second half and it lifted the team. He has a presence at full-back and that’s what we needed. He was brilliant.
“We concentrated on getting right for this game in the last three weeks, when the club championship com mitments were over. People say we should have done more – an analyst on Clare FM the other night said we should have 25 or 26 sessions done.
“It’s impossible to do that. There was no point doing anything until the first two rounds of the championship were over. We worked hard for three weeks and the result is there in that win.”
Now for the Munster final in July 13 next against Limerick.
“This is the unglamorous team of Clare hurling,” says Kennedy. “There’s no high profile, but winning a Munster final would be great. Clare needs to win something at adult level. When Clare won Munster and All-Ireland junior titles in 1993 we got things rolling. We need to get rolling again.
“With the team we have and the way we’ve got it right, I’m confident now.”