This article is from page 75 of the 2011-06-28 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 75 JPG
“IT was one, but it could have been 16,” quips James McCartan to one reporter from the fourth green field before the dictaphones were rolling, officially that is.
Hence the two-time All-Ireland winner and All Star’s verdict that “it was a strange kind of game”. Down starting as if they meant to run riot around Cusack Park, finishing with the near meltdown of only scoring two points in the last 25 minutes and being driven back over the wall into Stamer Park, the home of Daly’s Undertakers.
And, it would probably have been a funeral for Down’s management team had they been on the wrong side of that one-point margin. No wonder it makes for a reflective McCartan afterwards.
“There’s no doubt about the fact that what we’ll take away from this game is the result – nothing else,” he admits. “It was a strange, very strange. Our lads decided they were going to go for goals at one stage and we were nearly left to rue that.
“Fair play to Clare, they dug deep for last 15 minutes of the first half and the last 15 minutes of the second half. We started both halves pretty brightly. That’s what you set out to do in the dressing room and whenever it starts to unravel a wee bit, you’re scratching your head. You send the same guys out at the start of the second half and they start off like a house on fire again,” he adds.
But from there, McCartan is at a loss to explain where it all went wrong and nearly horribly so.
“When we took Kalum (King) off it wasn’t us thinking we had the game won. We felt we needed fresh legs in there. The guy we brought in probably had missed a bit of training and was a wee bit off the boil, so we put Calum back in to try and finish the game out.
“I was disappointed the way we went out of the game for long periods of both halves – it’s something we’ll have to take a look at. You have to give credit to Clare, but we have to look at ourselves very closely over the next few days.
“I do think over the course of the game we probably deserved to win the game, but if Clare had stuck a goal in and won the match, we would have had to hands up and say that they deserved it, the way they got in at us and came back,” he adds.
That comeback was only denied by Conor Laverty’s last gasp goal-line clearance at the death.
“I was just delighted Conor (Laverty) was there,” admits McCartan. “He might have been lucky to stay on the field because he took a wild swipe at somebody earlier, but obviously we were lucky to get the break.
“In the past Down have lost in places like this. The team talk this morning in the hotel was that if we can get out of here with a one-point win, it will be a positive. That’s what we did. It was a mission accomplished.”
Only just.