This article is from page 87 of the 2011-09-27 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 87 JPG
ON it goes. The Cratloe carousel where players flit between kicking ball one week and pucking it the next.
Occasionally the lines become blurred, like they did when Cathal McInerney showcased his prodigious talent with one swing of his left leg on the sliotar to finally kill off Tulla’s challenge, but in Cratloe’s case it’s always a case of one game com- plimenting the other.
So it is that they’ve two county semi-finals to look forward too, and an under 21 final too. “It is like 2009,” admitted manager Mike Deegan, “but this year we’re used to it because we’ve done it before. We have more experience and hopefully that will pay to us in the end.
“All we want to do is keeping winning. It’s basically the same panel of players for both. Every day you win you get confidence and hopefully they’ll be able to carry that through to the next round.”
The footballers got to their penultimate round with a facile win over Lissycasey – the margin of victory here may have been nine points, but it was far from facile, as Deegan was quick to admit.
“It’s championship hurling and you’re not going to win a match very easily. The couple of goals at the end weren’t really fair on Tulla because they played really well and were very tough in the second half.
“Our guys started very well and then dropped off a small bit. When you go out in championship you hope that there will be an improvement everyday and we’ll be hoping for that the next day.”
Cratloe only managed 0-7 in their final group game against Inagh/Kilnamona – to say a haul 4-12 represented a massive improvement is putting it mildly. When asked for an explanation Deegan put it down to “the real important end” of the 2011 hurling year.
“Every match counts. The nervousness was there in the last couple of matches that we played, especially after the bad start we got against Tubber. After being beaten by Tubber we knew what we had to do. Every match we played was a knock-out game for us – obviously there were nerves there because we were afraid to lose but now it’s great to be back in a semi-final.”