This article is from page 69 of the 2011-10-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 69 JPG
MANAGER Patrick Murrihy was speechless at the end of it all, words failing him after the tumult of the final minutes when his charges looked to be staring defeat in the face only for Johnnie Daly to save the day with a brilliant point.
It was no wonder – he was as breathless as his players, still gathering himself in the minutes after the game as he deferred to trainer/coach John Kennedy.
“It wasn’t anything less than we ex- pected. We knew that Cratloe were a serious team and they proved that,” said Kennedy. “When we were five or six points up we could have kicked on and we didn’t. Cratloe never give up and it was very close.
“Football can be cruel and it went to the wire right a the end. It was a real intense game and scores were very hard to come by.
“No better man to get a chance at the end than Johnnie Daly who had just come on and kicked a great point. An old head and experience is what was needed at that stage and he did it and it was a score worthy of winning the game,” he added.
It was enough to book Daly’s sixth county final day out and Kilmur ry’s third in four years, but already Kennedy was looking for more.
“We have a lot of work to do with our forwards because we didn’t turn out superiority into scores,” he said. “The aim at the start of the year was to get to a county final and we’re there.
“You couldn’t be happy with the display of our forwards today. We showed well for the ball and won a lot of good possession but we didn’t translate it. We could have been comfortable with ten minutes to go if we had transferred it into scores but we didn’t.
“We’ll be favourites because Kilmurry are favourites going into most games. You have to take that. They have great experience and we’ll be hoping that we can bring home the Jack Daly,” he added.