*Eoin Cleary. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
FERMANAGH found it difficult to cope with the pace of Clare’s main shooters Emmet McMahon and Eoin Cleary in the third round of the National League, their manager has said.
A second loss in three outings was recorded by Fermanagh when they swapped Enniskillen for Ennis and came out the wrong side of Sunday’s 1-17 1-15 encounter.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Fermanagh manager Kieran Donnelly said, “We expected coming down here, the history between the two teams shows there is nothing between us but we felt we were playing against a pretty strong breeze in the first half but we played our best football in the first half, we built our play and got a lot of good scores from managing the ball and getting an extra pass in behind.
“The second half we missed a lot at a critical juncture in the game when we were on top, the last play hit the post and the crossbar which was very unfortunate because it would have been a two point score to bring us back level but Clare are a good team, they had some excellent performers like Emmet McMahon. We are disappointed because we thought we could come here and win but unfortunately that last shot didn’t go for us”.
Despite scoring four of the first five scores in the second half to take the lead for the first time, Fermanagh failed to push on. “Clare’s pace with Cleary and McMahon, they pick lines and move the ball pretty well, we got turned over a few times and got punished for it, it was as simple as that but when we were on top we took an extra pass on or forced a shot which you can tend to do when you’re playing with the breeze, we managed the ball better in the first half so that was probably our downfall”.
When trying to claw their way back Fermanagh did try to force a two pointer he acknowledged. “Especially when you’re playing with the breeze you have that option, we felt we needed it because there was two minutes on the clock so we were trying to get our shooters on the ball, Deccy (Declan McCusker) was really unlucky with that one. We’re disappoionted, we had been trying well, we put in a good performance last week and we wanted to back it up, we still felt we played well but it just didn’t go for us”.
He added, “We just have to concentrate game on game, there is nothing between the teams and I said that to the players, there’s things we have to tidy up but we can be proud of the performance because Clare is a tough place to come, we have to focus on Offaly next week and not read too much into this”.
