Joes piece in the clarepeople FIRST things first. Clare will account for Laois with something to spare in the All-Ireland Qualifier – they mightn’t score seven goals like they did one year down in The Gaelic Grounds under Anthony Daly’s watch as manager – but it will still be comfortable. Then they’ll move onto the boys of Wexford – they mightn’t be as weak as they were when Clare played them in Croke Park on a couple of occasions in the mid 2000s and before and after that in Portlaoise (or maybe they’re weaker) but back then sides trained by Cyril Lyons, Anthony Daly and Mike McNamara respectively always had far too much for the yellow bellies. So it will when they meet again, which means that Clare will be back to where they were last in 2008 under Mike McNamara – an All-Ireland Quarter-Final where they should be rehabilitated to a sufficient degree to give it a lash. That’s the key – it’s the key that was so badly missing from Clare’s game on Sunday and if you really want to parse it down to the bread and butter, the only time that Clare have gone after a championship game with real gusto over the past few years was the second half of last year’s All-Ireland Qualifier against Dublin in Cusack Park. That day, necessity was the great mother of invention, they were down to 14 men after the sending off of Nicky O’Connell. It was desperation time and suddenly when backed into a corner Clare threw off the shackles and hurled with an abandon, and consequently a real swagger, in a performance that was the best seen at Cusack Park since the day the Tony Considine managed Banner side got the better of Ger Loughnane’s Galway. That last 20 minutes or so against the Dubs was all about instinct. It was as if the players clicked into that mode when faced the handicap of a numerical disadvantage and the threat of being swamped by the opposition. It was a time to be defiant and they all stood up – won their own personal battles and the result followed. A key part of that was the tactical change that occurred when the occasion screamed out for it. They let the sliotar do the work that little bit more – it was a more direct as well as being a throwback to different days when blood, guts and sheer will to win counted for something, an awful lot in fact. Clare screamed out for that on Sunday, because the reality is that it’s putting it mildly to say that this was subdued performance. It was downright flat – it was no wonder that one member of press bench was heard to say mid-way through the second half ‘Clare look like they’re a team that was training for Cheltenham (March and winter hurling) while the Cork side look like everything was geared for Galway (August and beyond)”. It’s a valid point because Clare definitely looked flat, whereas in the two league games between the sides it was the polar opposite – Clare looked like the thoroughbreds as they turned on the gas in the second half down in Páirc Uí Rinn and again in the relegation play-off in The Gaelic Grounds. But Jimmy Barry Murphy is astute as they come and in terms of timing his training regime to peak for this Munster semi-final, he definitely got it right, while tactically he hit the mark also. It was clear from the action that Cork had targeted turnovers as a key to unlocking Clare’s defence. There were three if not four such turnovers that yielded Cork points – that made a huge difference to the outcome because with each meltdown of Clare’s short-passing game the team’s confidence had to take a battering, while Cork’s soared at the same time. Indeed, this meltdown was really hammered home with Cork’s final score. Domhnall O’Donovan, who hurled a good deal of ball in the Clare full-back line, was coming out with the ball but rather than give it some air up to the half-forward line where Fergal Lynch had been brought on – presumably for his ability to win the ball in the air – he went short. It was intercepted and flashed over the bar in an instant by Pat Horgan. Stuff like that would kill any team and it killed Clare on this day. It’s not that Clare should suddenly throw their game plan to the wind – to do so now could cause more chaos, anyway short passing is part of the modern game and has been since Dónal O’Grady’s Cork took a patent out on it in the mid-2000s and won a couple of All-Irelands. Thing is, the way that Cork team played it was a lot different to the way Clare played it on Sunday – short-passing yes and the ultimate attempt at possession hurling, but it was the way it was done with someone at pace always coming onto the ball which made such a difficult code to crack. Of course, all of the above wouldn’t have been written had Clare hammered home a couple of goals in the first half that would have put some real daylight between themselves and Cork, given them an eight or nine point lead at the break which would probably have been enough to see them through. The chances were there – Podge Collins, Darach Honan and Tony Kelly had their chances in first half, while opportunity knocked for Honan and Conor McGrath in the second half. Looking at it from the point of view that the glass is still half full, there’s still much to work on and work towards, because with the draw being kind to Clare in that they have avoided either Kilkenny or Dublin, the way has been opened up for them to reach an All-Ireland Quarter-Final for the first time in five years. But real progress in terms of the championship means getting to that Quarter-Final and then taking a scalp of one of the big guns and reaching an All-Ireland semi-final. That should be the minimum target for the team going forward in 2013.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Jun 2013 21:19:31 +0000
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