This article is from page 78 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 78 JPG
IF YOU were a betting man, you probably would have put your rainsoaked car on defending champions Doonbeg once they pulled four points clear near the turn of the final quarter. St Joseph’s had fought the good fight in the first half against the breeze to contain Doonbeg to a two point half-time advantage but after early scores from David Tubridy and Conor Downes, it seemed as if Doora/Barefield’s chance had gone.
“It wasn’t looking good,” admitted St Joseph’s manager James Hanrahan, “but when we got up the other side of the field, the whole thing started to turn around.
“There was a bit of a shower of rain and the breeze kind of rose up for a few minutes and we managed to get a couple of scores. And when we got a run on them, we always looked like we were going to get back into the game fairly fast.
“They still had one or two frees towards the finish and it didn’t look good because if one of them went over, we probably would have needed a goal to get back in the game but luckily enough for us, those frees went wide.”
Uncharacteristically they did drift wide and Doora/Barefield used those misses to inspire them further as they toppled the lead and eventually snatched an injury-time winner to set up a semi-final date with either Wolfe Tones or St Senan’s Kilkee.
So after resurrecting their championship campaign following two open- ing losses, how far does he reckon his side can potentially go this year?
“We will go as far as the semi-final anyway and we’ll take it one game at a time. I suppose after the first round, there is such a long break that it doesn’t really matter sometimes if you win the first match or lose it.
“The championship really started ten weeks after that and against Cratloe, while we were beaten, I felt that we had nine chances but kicked nine wides in the first half against them.
“We probably had a 21 yard free to go a point up with maybe ten minutes to go but missed that so it wasn’t the case that we were playing badly or being well beaten in every game, it was more of a case that we weren’t taking our chances at the time.
“On the Saturday morning before we played Shannon Gaels, we would have settled for staying out of the relegation places so to be in the quarter-final at the end of that was a big bonus and it drove the fellas on a bit more. We can’t afford to look any further now than the semi-final.”