This article is from page 100 of the 2008-06-17 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 100 JPG
CLARE manager Frank Doherty was left to ponder the usefulness of the Tommy Murphy cup after his side bowed out of the championship with defeat to Kerry.
Clare must now try and get their kicks in Gaelic’s football’s Inter-toto Cup instead of the more exacting theatre of the All-Ireland champion- ship.
Doherty didn’t quite match the lev- els of frustration conveyed by Mick O’Dywer after his Wicklow team were condemned to the Tommy Mur- phy Cup after losing to Laois, but, still, you could tell that it rankled.
‘“That’s something we’ll sit down and talk about. It’s hard when you win a championship game for a min- now county like ourselves,” said Doherty outside the Clare dressing
room in Fitzgerald Stadium.
“It’s a competition and you have to play it. You look at the likes of Wick- low. They beat Kildare in Croker and then they’re thrown into the Tommy Murphy and we beat Waterford and we hadn’t much of a chance coming down here and you’re going into the Tommy Murphy. With the qualifiers, at least if we could have got some- thing at home, we might have been of the same standard and who knows where it might have led us. We’ll have to sit down and talk about it later,’ he added.
Clare, in fairness, made a game of it in the first half, snapping at Kerry and denying them time and space on the ball.
The dismissals of Conor Whelan and John Hayes made a hard task 1m- possible against a side blessed with enormous talent, said Doherty.
“I thought, to a degree, that we could have put up a better show in the second half. We were there or therea- bouts in the first half, playing to the best of our ability I believe. But that’s an awesome Kerry team out there. What came off the bench, it’s scary. And that’s not to mind what’s on the field. I have to give credit to the lads. We probably played for about 45 minutes, something like that. The sending off of Conor Whelan was a big minus to us, but there again, Kerry can kick on when they want and they upped it a gear and we just didn’t have the answers”.
Still, despite the odds, Doherty was disappointed Clare didn’t make a better impression on the scoreboard in the second half and singled out the performance of goalkeeper Joe Hayes.
‘Joe was awesome. There were at
least two goal opportunities where he pulled off great saves. We had two or three other opportunities at least in the second half to make it a bit more respectable. There again, fair play to Joe – that’s what he’s capable of and that’s why he’s number one for Oem
Doherty revealed that he encour- aged his team to play without fear against the best team in the land in one of the finest arenas in the GAA.
‘Ennis for us was a must win game because we had lost the year before and I felt that if we lost to Waterford again it would have put Clare foot- ball back maybe x amount of years and we couldn’t afford that. We were nervous against Waterford, but today, I said look, lets have a go in front of a big crowd against the best team in the country and see what we can do in relation to going forward”.
Doherty didn’t see the incident leading up to Connor Whelan’s red- card and had no complaints over the late dismissal of John Hayes.
“T didn’t see what Connor Whelan was sent off for because it was down the other end of the field and I didn’t see it. Connor told me that he shoul- dered him. So I can’t really comment any more on that. John Hayes, obvi- ously it was late in the game, he was on a yellow card. I suppose he had to go and what can you do. As re- gards the Kerry sending off, I have no comment”’.
And off he went to the dressing room. Encouragement and work to take away from Killarney.