This article is from page 88 of the 2007-05-15 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 88 JPG
EARLY May and the time to dream returns. For the Clare footballers – with the safety net of the backdoor now removed – only a win will pro- long a championship summer.
The Tommy Murphy Cup, the sec- ondary and often ignored champion- ship sibling, will be all that’s on offer for whoever crashes out of Munster this weekend.
It’s an unthinkable fate for a county with Paidi O Sé at the helm, but it’s the result of a league that began well and finished poorly.
Since the beginning of the season,
interest among a number of play- ers had amazingly waned and the withdrawal of Ger Quinlan from the camp last week will be another blow for Clare.
After selector Vincent O’Connor appealed to the cream of Clare talent to come on board for the county team, he didn’t get a positive response.
“Clare are not blessed with a lot of quality players and they need every good player that’s available,” he said TOMEI aAe
Back then, he couldn’t have fore- seen the withdrawal of a player of Quinlan’s standard in the immediate lead in to Clare’s Munster campaign,
but that’s the deck Clare have to play with now and O’Connor isn’t getting or Neu cemr hue W
“We’re going to pick the team on Thursday night and see where we are but bar one or two niggling problems that we should get sorted out, things aren’t looking in bad shape.”
Even with a few bends in the road, Clare will still expect to get past Waterford when they meet in Dun- eee Ne
Should they do so, a trip to Kerry for the next round, televised live, is the prize. The opportunity for Paidi O Sé and his fellow west Kerryman O’Connor to field a team in front of
their native audience would be ap- pealing.
“The prospect of playing Kerry is something which we’re not worried about right now. Waterford went to Kerry this time last year and gave them a real fright. If they hadn’t missed a penalty they’d have pushed Kerry, so they’re a decent team. We can’t contemplate anything else but Sunday’s game. Waterford are in the frame for us, they’re a tough team and that’s all we can see.”
Over in Waterford, manager John Kiely is upbeat about his side’s prospects. They had an even poorer league run than Clare but that hasn’t
dampened his spirits.
“We’ll be ready to give Clare a right good game when they come here,” he said. “It’s fair to say we had a bad run of things in the league but we’re not worried about that right now. We ran Kerry and Longford close last year and we’ve shown the kind of football we can play. We want another big performance against Clare.”
Two teams coming at it from a sim- ilar standpoint. The summer opens and judgement time is looming. It’s May and there’s everything to play oe