*Clare’s footballers stand for the national anthem. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
FLAT, lifeless and lethargic, Clare’s sixth defeat of the year between league, championship and the Tailteann Cup was up their as their most disappointing.
A 1-17 1-14 defeat at home to Offaly on Saturday has Clare needing a win in Round 2B of the Tailteann Cup next weekend against Longford in Zimmer Biomet Páirc Chíosóg otherwise their season will be over at the earliest opportunity.
Clare manager Paul Madden admitted their backs are now to the wall as they enter must-win territory. “It is knockout now, maybe that is what we need to be under that bit more pressure, we had prepared quite well, we thought we had but it was just one of those days”.
It took until the forty fifth minute for Clare to take the lead against Offaly, Cormac Murray kicking a two pointer, shortly after scoring a goal. They would only lead on two occasions in the game, Brian McNamara with two points in a row seeing them regain an advantage on fifty two minutes.
Madden felt there was a flatness to their performance. “We won the throw-in but we were chasing it from the start, it was a flat sort of a game all round. The atmosphere was flat bar the goal and the two pointer which gave us a lead, we had four points scored in the first half and there was a difficult breeze but we only got four points and had loads of chances, it went wide or kicked to the goalie’s hands. It is very disappointing, we are where we are, we’ve a couple of weeks to get our heads into the next round”.
He added, “It was a bit flat, I can’t fully put my finger on it after the game but when you start kicking balls short into the keeper’s hands and start missing shots that you should be scoring then that is going to add to the flatness. They got a couple of clutch scores, we got the goal and then we let them in for their goal, just switching off of concentration and then it is a score. They were full value for their win and were definitely the better team overall”.
Ennis native Paul was left as downbeat with their performance as much as the result. “The result is hugely disappointing but the performance is disappointing, we were so poor today for the most part, a couple of decent things but our shot selection and execution was chronic in the first half and practically as bad in the second half. I give credit to Offaly, this was a big one for them, they hadn’t won a competitive game all year so they were obviously going to go at it but when we got the goal and a point straight after to go ahead for the first time you thought ok just settle, take our time, work a few scores but it didn’t happen for us. They got kickouts away quite easily in the second half, a lot of the time we just gave them a platform and they were running at us at pace, they are a running team, they run the ball and they had some wides that they wouldn’t be happy with but overall they were fully deserving of their win”.
Against the All-Ireland champions Kerry a fortnight previous, Clare kicked one wide in the whole game, this figure sky rockete to fourteen against an Offaly side who had failed to register a win across nine competitive matches in 2026 prior to coming to Cusack Park. “There were five shots dropped short into the goalie too which I would class as worse than a wide, that is the guts of twenty bad shots and not always under pressure too which is frustrating. Our shooting efficiency all year has been strong but today it was really poor. There were lots of other facets to the game that weren’t great but if you have that amount of wides you will lose a game”.
Captain Cillian Rouine was a late omission from Saturday’s team. He was ruled out due to illness and joined the already absent Eoin Cleary, Darragh Bohannon, Dermot Coughlan, Stephen Ryan, Seán McAllister and Emmet McMahon.
When asked by The Clare Echo if such continued losses in personnel was impacting on the morale and confidence of the team, Madden stated, “Morale isn’t the issue, it is my job to manage the morale of the players. The players want to play for Clare, that is the main thing, losing your captain before the throw-in to a flu virus which hit him pretty bad over the last forty eight hours isn’t ideal but I wouldn’t have mentioned it only for you brought it up, we have a panel of twenty eight today including the stand-in players, we had players good enough to win the game we just didn’t execute it”.
