This article is from page 85 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 85 JPG
A MAIDEN voyage for the good ship Clare under Micheal McDer- mott, Liam McHale and James Foran, but more than that, it was also a maiden voyage for Clare under the new experimental rules in place for the duration of the McGrath Cup and National League.
And, thanks to those new rules implemented by Kerry official John Lynch, Clare can always say that they at least enjoyed one victory on the day — the tag of being more au fait with the rules than their UCC op- ponents.
All because UCC were pulled up on five occasions for handpasses that were given without the closed fist, while Clare only infringed this rule once over the hour. As for the mark, there was a noticeable lack of high fielding on the day, but Clare did edge this stat too by 2-1 thanks to Alan Clohessy and Gary Brennan catching kickouts in the first half.
Still, despite this hollow victory, Clare manager Micheal McDermott believes the mark idea, though good in principle is doomed to failure, gamesmanship even. “The mark is something that I don’t think will
work,’ he says.
“Teams will get clever and there will be more breaking ball than field- ing in the middle of the field. The idea is good to try and introduce high fielding, but I think more teams will concentrate on trying to break the ball to make sure a guy doesn’t catch it and you’re going to be back to the same old situation again.
“But the mark is there for the league and we’ll have to work with it. When you win the mark, you are waiting for the whistle, rather than using the ball quickly. When you do that you give the opposition a chance to fun- nel back. We have no problem with the rule being in place. We have to learn to use the ball quickly when we make a mark. That’s something we have to work on.”
As for the fist pass, the work looks already done. “We were good on the fist pass,” says McDermott, giving the rule the thumbs up. “We worked hard on the fist pass in training, whereas UCC suffered from it be- cause it’s not in place for the Siger- son Cup. But the advantage we got in the game was something we didn’t punish.”
You can’t win them all, one sup- poses.