The Clare People Archive

FIANNA FAIL county council- lor Pat McMahon has called on the Minister for Transport to revise his view on funding for damage caused to roads during the recent bad weather.

Minister Noel Dempsey has said that additional money will not be made available to local authorities to repair roads damaged in recent weeks. How- ever, his party colleague, Councillor Pat McMahon said the statement is “outrageous” and has called on the minister to rescind it.

The Newmarket-on-Fergus council- lor made the comments during a de-

bate on roads at a meeting of Shannon area councillors last week. He said the minster was “irresponsible” to make such a statement.

“He’ll have to rescind that state- ment. That’s outrageous. He consist- ently amazes me,” he said.

Cllr McMahon said the minister had shown “naivety” in his attitude towards local government.

Independent councillor Gerry Flynn said there were problems on roads where surface dressing was in place. “Tt really highlights the idea of sur- face dressing and is it value for mon- ey? .. It has been a complete waste of taxpayers’ money,” he said.

“Local people were prisoners in

their own homes. The local roads and footpaths were impassable,” he said.

The mayor of Shannon, Councillor Sean McLoughlin (FG) asked would money be set aside to repair the roads where potholes have become a domi- nant feature. “Will the council be de- manding special money? I think the council should demand money. Every road you drive on has potholes,’ he ene

Independent councillor Patricia Mc- Carthy said, “It would appear liquid poured on the roads is not suitable. There isn’t a road in the town or sur- rounding area that isn’t without a pot- hole. The concrete roads are literally falling to pieces.”

‘Whatever review 1s going on has to take into account the centres of popu- lation. It’s not simply a rural isolation. It’s an urban isolation,’ she said.

Fine Gael Councillor John Crowe said that in the past, the roads in the Shannon area were “exceptionally good, but very, very good roads are deplorable at the moment. There is a major, major job to be done.”

Councillor Tony Mulcahy (FG) said, “We were too late dropping grit. The locations we dropped it in seemed to work. It isn’t feasible to have 20,000 workers in the county working on it,” he said.

He acknowledged the excellent work put in by council employees during

the cold snap. “The council don’t have the manpower and resources to grit every footpath in the county. We have to take individual responsibility too,” ltemcrs BCG

Senior Executive Engineer with Clare County Council, Eugene O’Shea said the type of material used on some road surfaces was not suitable given the “unprecedented” weather. He said that a more permanent finish would be desirable “but it comes at a cost and you can only do so much.”

In relation to funding, he said that the county engineer has asked each area council for a list. This will be submitted to the Government and funding will be sought.

Funding not exactly flooding in for victims

GARDAI investigating the death of Brian Casey last night issued a fresh appeal for information – in advance of the file on the case being sent to the DPP this week.

The 26-year-old from Lissycasey sustained serious head injuries in an incident in Ennis on St Stephen’s Night and died in hospital two days later. After the file is received by the DPP, a decision will be taken on whether charges will follow.

Two men are charged with as- sault causing harm to Mr Casey, at O’Connell Square, Ennis, on De- cember 26/27. The accused are Har- ry Dinan (29), of Waterpark Heights, Ennis, and his nephew Kevin Dinan (22), of Clarehill, Clarecastle. They were charged on December 28 and re-appeared before Ennis District Court on Friday where they were further remanded in custody to ap- pear again next Friday week.

A team of gardai have been work- ing on the investigation and the case file is nearing completion. Several statements have been taken and CCTV footage from the area has been viewed.

CLARE TD and Minister for State Tony Killeen (FF) is only too aware of what benefits the National Color- ectal Screening Service can bring to potential cancer suffers in Ireland.

The junior minister who was di- agnosed with bowel cancer last year said the announcement of the screen- ing service by the minister for health was positive, “as the key intervention in cancer of any kind is early diag- nosis”.

“If I went a bit sooner I would have

escaped the trauma and discomfort of chemotherapy,” he maintained.

“If I went later the outcome would be much more negative,” he added.

Announcing the new screening service, Minister Mary Harney said, “The next and most important clini- cal priority for population screening has been colorectal screening. This is acritically important development for both men and women. Colorectal screening has two great benefits – early detection of cancer, improving treatment outcomes, and the detec- tion of pre-cancerous growths.”

The first screening programme will be for people aged between 60 and oe,

“We are starting this year with the detailed preparations, so that the pro- gramme will commence screening in 2012 for the people involved on a national basis irrespective of where people live,” she said.

Minister Killeen added, “This is one of the diagnosis that tends to be very accurate, and with early diagno- sis the recovery rate is very high.”

“When an opportunity like this (screening) is put to people they usu-

ally use it,” he said.

The Clare Minister admitted that men are not the best however for attending doctors for tests, but said there is usually a positive if you go pm Ansar

“There 1s no advantage of going too late,’ he warned.

Colorectal cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer among men and women in Ireland.

About 2,200 new cases are diag- nosed every year and approximately 1,000 people die from it.

Free screening will initially be of-

fered to 400,000 people in the 60 to 69 age group. The programme will be operated by the National Cancer Screening Service in cooperation with the Health Service Executive and will be extended to all those aged 55 to 74 years of age “as logistics and resources allow”’.

The 60 to 69 year age group con- tains about 50 per cent of all cases of colorectal cancer in the 55 to 74 year age band, and other countries includ- ing England, Sweden and Finland have aimed their programmes on this 60 to 69 year age group also.

CLARE senior hurling manager Ger O’Loughlin has called for patience from supporters as he looks to step up the rebuilding process to make Clare a serious force in hurling once rae) Kor

O’Loughlin was speaking after his side claimed victory in their opening game of the year against college side WIT and in a frank assessment, the two time All-Star winner feels that this is a three year development plan due to the low average age and inex- perience of the current squad.

“It’s a very young panel and I hon- estly do believe that this set-up will be three years before we will actu- ally see how good they are going to be. I hope people have the patience because we have only something like five lads over 25 so you can’t expect miracles.”

Clare’s All-Ireland Under 21 suc- cess has brought renewed hope to the county after a disastrous year at senior level but despite calling up a large percentage of that Under 21 squad, assilimilating them to senior hurling will take time according to O’ Loughlin.

“There are new lads on the scene and you could see there today how enthusiastic they were. They wanted to be on there, they were trying hard, they were hooking and blocking and as I say we will all learn as we’re go- ing along I presume.”

Next up for Clare will be a quarter- final clash with All-Ireland finalists and Munster champions Tipperary in what will be a repeat of last year’s final. Clare have played the Premier on five competitive occasions over the last two years, with their only victory coming in last year’s Wa- terford Crystal Cup in Ogonnelloe; Clare’s first senior trophy in eleven years. That game will now take place next Tuesday evening, January 26th in Borrisoleigh at 8pm but for O’Loughlin, game time is still his main motivation at the moment.

‘These matches are great if the weather can improve because you could see there that this 1s what we were lacking there today. We have Six or seven sessions done on the physical side of it and you can even see that the lads were able to hold out there for the 62 or 63 minutes but we need more hurling.”

A MAIDEN voyage for the good ship Clare under Micheal McDer- mott, Liam McHale and James Foran, but more than that, it was also a maiden voyage for Clare under the new experimental rules in place for the duration of the McGrath Cup and National League.

And, thanks to those new rules implemented by Kerry official John Lynch, Clare can always say that they at least enjoyed one victory on the day — the tag of being more au fait with the rules than their UCC op- ponents.

All because UCC were pulled up on five occasions for handpasses that were given without the closed fist, while Clare only infringed this rule once over the hour. As for the mark, there was a noticeable lack of high fielding on the day, but Clare did edge this stat too by 2-1 thanks to Alan Clohessy and Gary Brennan catching kickouts in the first half.

Still, despite this hollow victory, Clare manager Micheal McDermott believes the mark idea, though good in principle is doomed to failure, gamesmanship even. “The mark is something that I don’t think will

work,’ he says.

“Teams will get clever and there will be more breaking ball than field- ing in the middle of the field. The idea is good to try and introduce high fielding, but I think more teams will concentrate on trying to break the ball to make sure a guy doesn’t catch it and you’re going to be back to the same old situation again.

“But the mark is there for the league and we’ll have to work with it. When you win the mark, you are waiting for the whistle, rather than using the ball quickly. When you do that you give the opposition a chance to fun- nel back. We have no problem with the rule being in place. We have to learn to use the ball quickly when we make a mark. That’s something we have to work on.”

As for the fist pass, the work looks already done. “We were good on the fist pass,” says McDermott, giving the rule the thumbs up. “We worked hard on the fist pass in training, whereas UCC suffered from it be- cause it’s not in place for the Siger- son Cup. But the advantage we got in the game was something we didn’t punish.”

You can’t win them all, one sup- poses.

TEAM coach Liam McHale takes the subs who saw no action for some exercise, while selector James Foran is with those who had game time for some stretches, while Micheal Mc- Dermott stands in between the two different groups and reflects on a very indifferent day.

‘Few positives,” he says cutting to the chase. “It wasn’t a good enough performance for the Clare public coming into Cooraclare to see what Clare football is going to be about in 2010.

“It wasn’t a good performance — we can’t hide behind anything. The one thing that disappointed me the most, and we’ve been working on it a lot in training, is creating goal chances. We never looked like threatening the goal there and maybe it’s a lack of belief in players.”

Some early doom and gloom then, before McDermott reminds himself that Clare are only two weeks into their season, and University College Cork are at it since the start of the new academic year last October.

‘They were much fitter than us, but the purpose of today was that even though it was a losing situation, we have learned a lot. The most impor- tant match we’re facing into was not this McGrath Cup game but the first league game against Wicklow on /eoje)abe- ba aae)

“This was a bigtime learning ex- perience — it was an opportunity for fellas to show that they were of in- ter-county standard, that they going to be ready for the type of game we wanted to play, that they were going to be ready for a battle.

“We learned a lot today and from

that point of view this was beneficial, but we know that we have a hell of a lot of work to do and two weeks training that we’ve had isn’t going to change that.

“Our use of the ball, or forward play was weak and there weren’t enough guys showing for the ball and hungry enough to win it. We started extremely well for ten or 15 minutes but then ran out of steam and the level of fitness was poor. But listen, fitness 1s something you can work on, but football is the most important thing to get right as well.”

And, to get those frontline players on sabbatical, or on Kilmurry Ibrick- ane duty back into the fold by Febru- aoe

“T would like, depending on what’s going to happen with Kilmurry Ibrickane next Sunday — we don’t want to look beyond that but I’d like to have some of those players avail- able for the Wicklow game,” he says

“We need those two points on the board — it’s our first home match of the season and we need to win it. We have a hell of a lot of work to do, but this is where it starts in the next cou- ple of months is going to be vital as regards the future of Clare football for 2010.

“It’s going to be a tough three weeks. We have learned a lot about individual players; we’ve learned a lot about the team as a unit and it’s about getting things right for three weeks and if we come out with two points in Cusack Park against Wick- low in three weeks time, today will all have been worthwhile.”

THE value of an insightful analyst is immeasurable. That’s why in the lead up to Kilmurry Ibrickane’s All-Ire- land quarter-final clash with Tir Cho- naill Gaels in the Emerald Grounds in Ruislip this weekend, Paul Hehir’s vast knowledge into both sides can- not be overestimated.

For the uninitiated, Hehir has played at the highest level for both Clare and London, was part of the all conquering Doonbeg side that cap- tured several county titles at the turn of the century as well as a Munster crown in 1998. He has also played a sizeable part of his career for Lon- don side Tara also with brother Sen- an, picking up a London and British championship in 2003. Add in the fact that he played against Tir Cho- naill Gaels in this year’s league final and also represented Doonbeg in the 2008 Clare senior championship and it’s abundantly clear that there is no better judge of this game than Hehir.

First to the strengths and weakness- es of Tir Chonaill Gaels.

“Basically they are a just a well or- ganised club and the best run club in London to be honest with you. They have a good backroom staff with regards to the people running the club and have just got the commit- ment from the players really. Their strength mainly lies with their work- rate coming from the back. Their backs are very good and very tidy and they have a good strong mid- field. Basically the only thing they would be lacking really would be a panel of players. They have got a good 13 or 14 good players whereas the Kilmurry lads would have a good bench which will proably be decisive I reckon on the day.”

Having won four out of the last five London championships, the Gaels have ample experience of All-Ireland

quarter-finals but have been rather

unfortunate not to have advanced further, mainly due to a lack of belief according to Hehir.

“It’s a combination of things re- ally. What it really comes down to, just as in the county team, is whether they believe collectively that they can actually beat a team from home. They have come close in the last few years and it’s never easy for a team that comes over to London whether it’s inter-county or a club match and it would be good for London football in general if they did pull off a shock. Although It wouldn’t really be much of a shock in London because they are a good club team. They have got great backs, a good midfield and as I have said three or four decent for- wards. They are also full of inter-

county experience with lads from Roscommon, Leitrim and Donegal, guys who have played at the highest level back home but it’s just about be- lieving that they can win.”

Kilmurry Ibrickane’s chances of advancing to the semi-final stage have been made all the more difficult by the fact that they will have to take on the perennial London champions in their own back yard, a daunting prospect as Hehir outlines from per- sonal experience.

“Coming over to London is never easy for any team. I know that myself when I came over with Clare. You somehow have it in the back of your head that they are still only based in London and that you should be beat- ing them but any team that comes

over to London never has it handy.”

Still when pushed for a verdict, he gives a slight nod to Kilmurry Ibrickane on their strength of their overall squad.

“IT mean there is no taking away from what Kilmurry Ibrickane have achieved. I think they have only been beaten once in the last two years which says a lot for the quality they have. They have a great youth devel- Opment system coming through and it seems to have extended to the sen- ior team. They have great old heads of Johnny Daly, Odran O’Dwyer and Peter and Michael O’Dwyer as well and then there is the new breed coming through with the likes of Enda Coughlan and Mark McCarthy. There is a great combination and they

seem to mix it very well going all the way up to Micheal McDermott at the atosbene

“At the end of the day, it’s going to be a great game in fairness. They are two good footballing sides, two tough teams and at the end of the day, it’s just going to come down to who wants it more and overall I think that Kilmurry Ibrickane might edge it purely on the strength of the bench they have, despite the massive dent that Odran O’Dwyer’s injury will have.”

THE issues of fixtures will be ad- dressed at the upcoming Ladies Football convention. According to the Secretary, Michael Fitzpatrick, fixtures continue to be a problem, particularly at minor level.

“Again this competition [minor] did not finish until November because some clubs did not stick to the fixture plan,” he points out in his report that will be delivered at the annual con- vention on Tuesday.

He said he feels the Junior A cham-

pionship should be played before the B, the intermediate before the junior and senior before the intermediate.

He added that the fixtures com- mittee must look at rule 339 of the official guide of 2007 or rule 347 of 2009, which states ‘A team failing to fulfil a championship fixture may forefit its place in the competition and the game may be awarded to its opponents.”

He also pointed out that the team is liable to a suspension of six months. “As we are on rules another which we may have to look at for 2010 is

rule 156 of 2007 which states that the county committee may fine a club for not attending county board meetings.”

In his report, the secretary points out that some clubs are inclined to play unregistered players at under- age. “This is a very dangerous habit, as if a player should receive an injury and are not registered, they are not covered.”

As part of his report, he will also go through, in detail, the on field mat- ters of ladies football in Clare, which experienced a very successful year.

AS Waterford senior hurling manag- er, David Fitzgerald will be trying to plot the downfall of his native county in this year’s Munster senior hurling Semi-final, but at the same time he’ll be trying to plot a successful senior championship year back home in OK

All because the two-time All-Ire- land winner and three-time All Star is set to operate a dual management/ coaching mandate in 2010, having committed to throwing in his lot with Inagh/Kilnamona for a second successive year.

The Waterford supremo linked up with Inagh/Kilnamona last year after Waterford’s exit from the All-Ireland race at the semi-final stage, but club insiders have told The Clare People that Fitzgerald will be with Inagh/ Kilnamona from the word go this

year.

And, Fitzgerald won’t be alone, as former Clare senior camogie manag- er Bertie Sherlock from Toomevara, is also a member of the Iangh/Kilna- mona backroom team for the coming season as they bid to make the big breakthrough at senior champion-

ship level. It will be Inagh/Kilnamona’s third championship season, following

their formation in late 2007 when the Inagh and Kilnamona clubs joined forces under the one banner. In 2008 they got off to a flier when beating reigning county champions Tulla in the first round and went on to reach the knockout stages before being beaten by St Joseph’s Door-a-Bare- field in the quarter-final. Last year they reached the same stage before being edged out by Kilmaley.