This article is from page 101 of the 2010-02-23 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 101 JPG
A FEW pennies for John Mulligan’s mind 40 seconds into this All-Ire- land semi-final. His team are down a man, but not just any man. It’s his own flesh and blood, his son Brian whose wild lunge at Shane Hickey has made Portlaoise men everywhere see red.
Surely Mulligan’s Snr’s mind turned to mush after what was surely the most controversial and explosive start to an All-Ireland Club game in the competition’s 40-year history.
By half-time Mulligan Snr moves to remonstrate with the Sligo referee, but by full-time he’s nothing to say to him anymore. Happy days say mem- bers of the Fourth Estate — maybe he’ll get his retaliation via the pages of the press, both local and national.
Well John, what about that? Not the result but the sendings off.
We expect him to let rip, he does to an extent, but it’s not the revolution
we re expecting.
“The sendings off had a huge im- pact. The first one, the game was on only a few seconds and it was a real sucker blow. I don’t want to go into it too much more but they were crazy, crazy, crazy decisions.
“It was a joke. If the man has a conscience, he won’t sleep for a long time. If he hasn’t a conscience, there won’t be a bother on him.”
It’s as far as he’s prepared to go be- fore he comes back with some more: “Apart from that sending off, when we were trying to get back into the game in the first-half there were a few big handpasses given against us. But I don’t want to take from Kil- murry’s win, but let us just say that the referee’s performance left a lot to oom ee USLO
“Frustration came into it, but Kil- murry came at us in waves when we were down to 14 men. If the sending off had come maybe ten minutes in when the game had settled, we prob-
ably would have been able to deal with it better, but at the start like that it was a real sucker blow and very hard to recover from it.
“That’s sport. That’s life. You just have to get up and get on with it. That’s what makes sport so marvel- renin
That was it — the rest was all about Kilmurry Ibrickane. How great they were and all that. How he was in their corner now.
‘“Kilmurry Ibrickane fully deserved their win on the day. I know a lot of things went against us but that’s a different matter. I hope that Kilmur- ry Ibrickane go on now and win the All-Ireland for themselves and for their local community.
“The spirit they have, they’ve a great bond with the supporters; they’re what the GAA 1s all about and I’m sure they’ll give Clare a great boost if they go on and win an All-Ireland. I really hope they go on and win it now.”