This article is from page 101 of the 2008-04-15 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 101 JPG
NEXT week, Clare will travel to London and will record their fourth league win on the trot. It will bring some clear comparisons to Clare’s league run in 1990/91 when another relatively unknown Connaught man- ager came to the county and em- barked on his first league campaign.
Back then, John Maughan’s Clare began poorly, lost the opening half of their league games, then turned things around in the latter half of the competition. Incidentally, both campaigns included important wins against fancied Wicklow sides. It may be a sign.
On Sunday afternoon, with the warm down over, Frank Doherty was basking in the late afternoon sun gushing onto the Cusack park grass, but was still focused on next week- aKeb
“We’re going to take a professional view about the London game,” he says. “We’re not going away to have a bit of fun, because I want to finish the campaign having won four on the trot. I want to send a shock wave down to Waterford to say we’re not gone away, we’re here and we’re able to do business when they come to Cusack Park [in the championship] in five weeks time.”
The turn about in Clare’s league, he says, can be attributed to two com- ponents — one mental, and the other on the field.
“Confidence and training,’ he says. “I still believe if we beat Carlow we’d have been pushing the latter end of the league. This could have been a league final here today. But we lost our confidence after Carlow and then Antrim came here and gave us a wake up call and there were games
there we could have won.
“Then training was important as well. We didn’t have time to knuckle down and do some championship pace training but when the [one week] break came [just before Clare began to win again] we got back to solid training.”
The return of confidence and the opportunity to train at a pace Do- herty was happy with, provided the springboard for this hat-trick of vic- tories, culminating with Sunday’s defeat of Offaly.
“The big thing for me today was that we showed a lot of bottle and a lot of character at the end. Once they drew level, we stayed going and went down and kicked the winning point. Questions have been asked of this team and today, some of those were answered.’
After 40 minutes, with the score level, there came the odd bellow from the stands, calling on the man- ager to move things about around the centre of the field. Though Doherty didn’t heed any of those cat calls, he says Clare could have gripped mid- field with a stronger hold.
“We can do better at midfield, but we had two young lads there today, Frank [O’Dea] and Garry [Bren- nan]. David [Russell] came out and we moved Garry across, but we were missing [the suspended] Ger [Quin- lan’s] strength and presence in there as well.
“We basically have four competing for two positions. I have to put David on the team because he’s working hard and his effort has been mighty. Ger would have horsed into Ciaran McManus if he was there and that would have freed up either Garry or Frank. In fairness, the lads today are young and we have to compliment
them and drive them on rather than be hitting on them.
He’s asked about his decision to withdraw his captain, Michael O’Shea, before re-introducing him.
“I think it was obvious why he was taken off. Michael will give every- thing, he was winning ball but we were giving away ball too softly. I didn’t want to sit around and wait, so we brought on Sean Collins and he was just on a minute or two and kicked a point.
“T can never doubt Michael’s com- mitment to Clare, but turning ball over and losing it is a cardinal sin. But I put him back in and he kicked a score. I don’t want to be unkind to anybody but at times, you have to do that. You can’t kick a ball into a goalkeeper’s hands after commit- ting playing forward. It allows them re-group and leaves your team ex- posed.”
He goes on to explain that Rory Donnelly had just passed a fitness test on Saturday night and as his hamstring problem re-surfaced, the manager felt it was wiser to take him off than risk further injury. He also says the decision to play Gordon Kel- ly at corner back was a tactical deci- sion, made with the scoring threat of Niall McNamee in mind.
“Gordon did well again, he kept McNamee quiet. You can’t ask for jeeKO)KommM er: DaMAer-limae
London next week before the crunch visit of Waterford on May 25. From here, there’s no reason why Clare can’t string five wins together.