This article is from page 84 of the 2010-01-19 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 84 JPG
TEAM coach Liam McHale takes the subs who saw no action for some exercise, while selector James Foran is with those who had game time for some stretches, while Micheal Mc- Dermott stands in between the two different groups and reflects on a very indifferent day.
‘Few positives,” he says cutting to the chase. “It wasn’t a good enough performance for the Clare public coming into Cooraclare to see what Clare football is going to be about in 2010.
“It wasn’t a good performance — we can’t hide behind anything. The one thing that disappointed me the most, and we’ve been working on it a lot in training, is creating goal chances. We never looked like threatening the goal there and maybe it’s a lack of belief in players.”
Some early doom and gloom then, before McDermott reminds himself that Clare are only two weeks into their season, and University College Cork are at it since the start of the new academic year last October.
‘They were much fitter than us, but the purpose of today was that even though it was a losing situation, we have learned a lot. The most impor- tant match we’re facing into was not this McGrath Cup game but the first league game against Wicklow on /eoje)abe- ba aae)
“This was a bigtime learning ex- perience — it was an opportunity for fellas to show that they were of in- ter-county standard, that they going to be ready for the type of game we wanted to play, that they were going to be ready for a battle.
“We learned a lot today and from
that point of view this was beneficial, but we know that we have a hell of a lot of work to do and two weeks training that we’ve had isn’t going to change that.
“Our use of the ball, or forward play was weak and there weren’t enough guys showing for the ball and hungry enough to win it. We started extremely well for ten or 15 minutes but then ran out of steam and the level of fitness was poor. But listen, fitness 1s something you can work on, but football is the most important thing to get right as well.”
And, to get those frontline players on sabbatical, or on Kilmurry Ibrick- ane duty back into the fold by Febru- aoe
“T would like, depending on what’s going to happen with Kilmurry Ibrickane next Sunday — we don’t want to look beyond that but I’d like to have some of those players avail- able for the Wicklow game,” he says
“We need those two points on the board — it’s our first home match of the season and we need to win it. We have a hell of a lot of work to do, but this is where it starts in the next cou- ple of months is going to be vital as regards the future of Clare football for 2010.
“It’s going to be a tough three weeks. We have learned a lot about individual players; we’ve learned a lot about the team as a unit and it’s about getting things right for three weeks and if we come out with two points in Cusack Park against Wick- low in three weeks time, today will all have been worthwhile.”