This article is from page 104 of the 2007-10-16 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 104 JPG
IT WAS justified. It was relentless. And most of all, for Lissycasey, it was historic.
The game itself wasn’t a pretty thing to watch, but with the cloak of success falling over them for the first time, that won’t matter to the new champions.
Perhaps the familiarity bred the dour nature of the game or maybe Lissycasey just got it right on the day. This was the third champion- ship meeting between the two in only twelve months and it was clear who had learned more in that time and who hungered more over the past year.
From the start, Lissycasey were
like lions targeting a gazelle. They sped out of the dressing rooms with- out a care for the usual pre-match sit down and smile for the camera. And coming back out after the half-time breather, their substitutes lined the entrance and roared their 15 back onto the field.
It was a frenzied approach and they compressed the life out of their op- ponents, pythonesque.
Throughout the field, the focus re- mained constant. With a couple of minutes left, Martin Daly turned to the umpire and asked how long till the final whistle. Daly believed there was still a quarter of an hour to ride out and couldn’t understand the game was nearly over. That was the sort of concentration and application
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“Last year was a massive motiva- tion,’ said Declan Conway from a perch underneath the stand. “The pain we felt standing here last year, looking up at Alan [Malone] lifting the cup. That hurt us. It’s been on our minds ever since. But these boys stuck with it. They gave it everything, had the belief and got their reward.”
For those who gave the breakaway club life back in the early ‘60s, this was a day to savour. A day they de- To Mio1em
Men and women had _ travelled home from far afield to watch this one, undeterred by the county final of 2006. They’ll go back to their new lands later in the week happy with the knowledge that the club is
in good hands. Progressive and ready to be fed by the new breed of young- sters who fill the homes on their side of the parish.
Just after he held the Jack Daly cup over his head, the first Lissycasey clubman to do so, James Kelly said this band of footballers were no long- er the whipping boys of Clare.
To be fair, they never were, but Sunday’s win puts them among the county’s elite and now, they’ve a de- cent chance of scalping Kerry side Kilcummin in the Munster champi- onship at a Clare venue on November oF