This article is from page 79 of the 2011-10-11 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 79 JPG
MICHAEL Browne’s record of getting teams to county finals continued on Sunday as he guided his native club to their second consecutive decider and his third in five seasons if you include his involvement with Tulla in 2007. It’s a achievement that cannot be argued with but he’s not taking a third success as a given, de- spite a powerful second half display from his side who outscored their opponents by 2-6 to 0-7 in that period.
“It’s brilliant, just fantastic to get back to a final for a second year in a row so we’ll see what happens. There’s a huge battle ahead of us, we know that, but at least we’re there.
“They always say ‘goals win matches’ and that’s all that was in it at the end and not alone were the goals cru- cial but also psychologically they put the opposition under a lot of pressure as well so we were lucky, we got them and thanks be to God, we’re there.
“The defence did very well. Maybe in the first seven or eight minutes, I thought they were very wobbly and dodgy and they didn’t seem to be getting their calls right but once they settled in, they were enormous in fairness to them.”
And just like Sixmilebridge manager Christy Chaplin the previous evening, Browne’s main reference point for the final inevitably stems from last year’s semi-final meeting between the pair that went Crusheen’s way by the barest of margins.
“One point is all that decided the teams last year and with time up, we were two points down if I remember correctly so I mean that’s how tight this is going to be.
“And I think the ‘Bridge are a better team this year than they were last year.
“They looked awesome to me yesterday but look we haven’t given any thought to them, we just prepared for this game because this was the only one we were interested in so we’ll prepare as well as we can for the county final and fingers crossed.”