This article is from page 80 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 80 JPG
AS Wolfe Tones players trooped off the field and into the dressing room after the first installment against St Senan’s Kilkee, the management team of supremo Brendan Reidy, coach Jerome Stack, Tony O’Gorman and a few more held back for a few minutes.
They were deep in conclave, talking it through, before finally going into the players. You could say that they were in game mode still – just as Brendan Reidy was when talking to reporters after the Tones eventually reappeared from behind the closed doors.
“We’re still in this in a big way,” said Reidy. “You better believe it,” he added. What’s more, he said a number of times – not to raise the spirits of some disconsolate clubmen around him after they had blown a four-point lead in the final minutes, but because he believed it.
The result was this performance – again they had a healthy lead, this time they closed it out to reach a first county semi-final in four years. Dreamland for a team decimated by emigration before a ball was kicked at the start of the year? Surely?
“When we gathered in January the main thing for the year was to safeguard our senior status,” admitted Reidy.
“We were totally down in numbers and it was just about re-grouping and staying up, because if we didn’t there was always the danger that football could go down in Wolfe Tones in a flash.
“We were lucky against Kilrush in the first game – total enthusiasm and workrate got us through that day and we built from there.
“There has been a great attitude in the dressing room all year. Small numbers bring that.
“After the drawn game we sat down as a team on Monday night and we thrashed it out. We got fellas’ opinions and there were a lot of fellas who didn’t play well the first day. Then we had a great training session on the Tuesday night and a lot of the fellas stood up in this game.
“I could never see the game being gone from us after the first day. We had the speed, we had the legs on them, it’s just that we didn’t finish them off.
“We did it this time and are looking forward to the semi-final.”