IT was 15 minutes from time – Clare were still trailing by three points, but it was the point when Clare coach Liam McHale was like a seasoned salmon fisher on River Moy outside his native Ballina.
The prize catch of the day, a real heavyweight catch, was hooked – just to win the battle of reeling it in to shore.
“I thought we had them,” says McHale. “It was when the Down defender came out and kicked it over the sideline with no one near him.
“I said to myself ‘these guys are under real pressure, we can take them’. Coming into the game, they were under pressure because they’re considered one of the best teams in the country and they were coming to play a Division 4 team.
“They weren’t supposed to be in the position they found themselves in when we were roaring back at them and dominating this game, but it wasn’t enough…….”
It wasn’t enough, say McHale, because the Clare performance over the 70 minutes wasn’t what it should have been. Rather than reflect in the strange kind of glory that comes with any near-miss by an underdog, McHale parses why the result didn’t go his team’s way.
“We had a lot of unforced errors – at the end of the first half and the start of the second half,” he says. “We were turning the ball over, not bringing the ball back and switching the play.
“We had some nightmare plays, especially at the start of the second half. That gave them a six-point lead that ultimately we couldn’t overhaul. It’s disappointing because we had been working on situations where there are two or three defenders around you, but then looking around and working it back, switching the play and attacking again.
“Yes we were excellent at times and played the best football we’ve played this year, but at other times we were very, very poor. We have to try and stop those basic errors. Every time you commit a basic error against a team like this, they’ll punish you. That’s what Down did. “We showed a lot of heart and we were the team playing all the football with about 12 minutes to go – but we wanted to do that for the whole game and unfortunately we didn’t do it. It’s a learning curve.
“If we were a litte bit smarter and took care of the ball a little bit more at certain stages of the game, especially at the end of the first and the start of the second, we could have won that game,” adds McHale.
Instead, just another defeat – Clare’s sixth defeat out of ten competitive games between league and championship – the only returns from the year coming in the league with wins of Kilkenny, London and Longford and a draw with Wicklow.
Wicklow, Longford and London all advanced in the first round Qualifiers – Clare didn’t, which even in their strange kind of glory moment, put a very disappointing year in perspective.
“We have to try and improve,” says McHale. “The ambition for this team at the moment is to get out of Division 4 – with the likes of Wicklow, Fermanagh, Limerick and Waterford, it’s not an easy task, but that’s the team’s ambition and that’s the right way to got about it.
“Get out of Divison 4, stay in that and then have an assault on Division 3. When you’re at that level and in Division 2, maybe then Clare can compete with the big boys in Munster. That’s what Clare football has to do first. Getting the best team out and getting out of Division 4 is a big must.”