This article is from page 84 of the 2007-07-10 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 84 JPG
THE knee was heavily bandaged, but it didn’t cost Gerry Quinn a thought as he took on the role of sideline mo- tivator as this game went down to the wire.
Sligo’s Eamon O’ Hara did the same in the Connacht football final the fol- lowing day – kicking every ball after injury forced him from the fray.
Quinn pucked every ball, just like he had when he was out on the field. It was the Corofin/Clarecastle game all over again. That day Quinn was immense at centre-back — he was the same on this day as Clare finally drew a line under the controversies that have dogged their years so far.
That was the gospel according to the vice-captain after the game as he reflected on a new dawn for the team. “After everything that’s happened this year, that win out there was a great boost for ourselves. That vic- tory has put all the past and what’s happened behind us, it’s onwards and upwards.
“We have our fan base again, peo- ple are back behind us and I think beating Galway in the park couldn’t have been much sweeter for us.
“We didn’t perform against Cork in the Munster championship and we knew that there was a lot more in us. Today proved that we have a good team and we’re still in the champion- ship. That’s for sure.
“Going into the game we knew we had nothing to fear from Galway. There’s nothing there that we hadn’t seen before. There’s nothing new We uer
“Overall we knew we were every bit as good as them. The goals came at the right time for us, especially Gilly’s goal.
“We’re aiming high. There’s no reason not to. We are among the top three or four teams in the country. Who knows where we can go from here. We still have a lot of work to do, but it was much better from us. Now we have to finish the job on Sat- urday and beat Laois.”
Quinn aims to be there, wounded knee or not.