*Éire Óg manager, Paul Madden. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
They set the standard in round one but Éire Óg failed to back this up over the weekend when suffered a surprise one point loss to Clondegad but manager Paul Madden is already eyeing up their crucial last group game with Doonbeg.
In September 2019, Dr Hennesy Park in Miltown Malbay was the venue when Doonbeg sent Éire Óg packing out of the Clare SFC at the quarter-final stage. When they meet in two weeks time, the prize for the winner is a quarter-final while the loser faces a potential relegation battle.
Speaking following their defeat to Clondegad, Éire Óg manager Paul Madden did not need reminding of their last championship outing against the Magpies. “We’re looking forward to it already. We will have fifteen players and more to come off the bench, whoever is there will do a job for us”.
He added, “The last two years we’ve lost out in quarter-finals and we’re sitting on our backside for the winter saying ‘what it’, today we lost but we’re still in the championship”.
Losing by the smallest of margins on Saturday was not a bitter pill he admitted. “To be honest it is not tough to take because we didn’t deserve to win it, we had loads of chances but didn’t convert them, we did a few things that we would normally never want to do and to be fair Clondegad were battling for their lives in championship, you could see that and they deserve it”.
“It is frustrating when you lose, it would be frustrating for me even when we win to have the chances and not score them but the last game which we played a month ago, a long time now, we got the scores and the goals but that is championship football, if it was easy everybody would be winning. Execution was the problem, our final pass we took the wrong option and gave it to the guy coming in rather than the guy who was free, we knew we were going to be in a battle and we said that during the week,” the Ennis hotelier stated.
When assessing the difference in their displays from the opening round and second encounter, the ex Chairman of Club Clare detailed, “Our workrate dropped today, I wasn’t happy with it, we have to be vicious in our workrate, that is the bedrock of our team but they tried, we kept going until the sixty fourth minute so it wasn’t like they gave up, they kept rallying. Things didn’t work for us today, we didn’t take goal chances but that happens in championship football, you’re playing against a team who only a couple of years ago were in a county final and maybe should have won it, they are a solid team with good players. Looking at ourselves, we knew we were going to be in for a battle but things didn’t work out today for whatever reason but we will definitely get to the bottom of that”.
