This article is from page 37 of the 2005-10-18 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 37 JPG
this week, Ward expressed his satisfaction at the balance that currently ex- ists in the squad.
‘We probably played better earlier on than we have done lately but we will be hoping for an improvement on Sunday. There is a good few young players coming through at the moment and we are delighted with that, along with hav- ing the older experienced lads like the Sheedys and those lads.”
Clarecastle will hold some advantage over the Shannon side going into Sunday’s clash given that they have had an extra week to prepare. Clarecastle overcame a battling per-
formance from Newmarket a week ago while Wolfe Tones turned in an assured perform- ance to brush aside the challenge of Barefield. Ward agrees that Wolfe Tones enter the game
as slight favourites, a tag which he believes is justified, but one which his side won’t be over- awed by.
“When you are hurling you can never have
enough time off. There is never an ideal time for a match. We are delighted to have the extra week. It has been a long year and we have been out since the beginning of March, so we are glad to be coming up to the county final so we are delighted it is now rather than later on.
“They (Wolfe Tones) are the favourites. I saw the game at the weekend and they are very good and the favourites – that’s the way it should be. We are going there to compete so after the match we will know who is the best team”
According to Ward preparations have gone smoothly with the only real injury concern be- ing Danny Scanlon who is expected to recover fully from a concussion sustained in the semi- nue
‘Preparations have been going fairly well. We came back in the middle of the week so the training has been going fine we have been fairly happy with it. We have trained on sched- ule and will train tonight and again on Wednes- day night and that will be the end of it. Danny Scanlon was out after the Newmarket match – he is expected to come back tonight and other than that we have what I would call normal wear and tear.”