This article is from page 79 of the 2011-09-20 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 79 JPG
PATRICK Murrihy likes a cigarette – after this ball game was over you’d be forgiven for thinking that the worried Kilmurry manager lit up any time the ball sailed wide of the posts in the second half.
Wrong. It probably happened earlier, given that the worrying started for Murrihy in the first half as he candidly revealed when reflecting on a game that threatened to go horribly wrong as those wides mounted up.
“At half-time I was concerned,” he said, “because we should have been six or seven points up. The longer you go without scoring in a game, particularly when you’re creating chances, the more stressed you become.
“That happened us. While we enjoyed plenty of possession and created loads of chances, some of our wides were practically in front of the goal. The challenge we got was nothing we didn’t expect from Cooraclare, but to summarise it we made it a little bit harder for ourselves. We hit 14 wides or something like that.
“It was a battle right to the very end and probably our experience won through in the end.
“They are very experienced players and it’s guys like that you look for. Other than our shooting we couldn’t fault our lads. They made a fair battle of it,” he added.
It all means that Kilmurry remain firmly on track to complete a clean sweep of senior titles in 2011 – just like they did back in 2008.
“With all the confusion over the last week or two, we didn’t know who we’d be playing in the semi-final before today,” admitted Murrihy.
“We weren’t even thinking of that, but now that it’s Cratloe all I can say is that last year we were absolutely poxed to get out of Cusack Park with a point of a win.
“It will be a very tough game. They are an up and coming team and we under no illusions about what faces up.
“Hopefully we will step it up. We have to if we’re to get through to a final.
“We have to up the tempo, but we are very happy where we are at the moment.”