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*Martin O’Leary is stopped in his tracks by Mark Killeen and Aidan McCarthy. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
Considerable improvement is needed from Kilmurry Ibrickane if they are to retain their title as Clare SFC champions.
Manager of the Bricks, Aiden Moloney was pleased to see his side advance to the last four but was adamant their showing in the three point win over Kilmihil will not be sufficient when it comes to the crunch of a semi-final encounter, a point which was reiterated by their players during the post-match huddle in Cusack Park on Saturday.
Moloney told The Clare Echo, “We’ve a few iffy performances under the belt at this stage, obviously we can go back and talk about this, that and the other thing, injuries and other stuff but everyone has their issues but there is no doubt we have to up our game and I think we can, there is definitely room for another twenty to thirty percent improvement and if we get that we will be a match for anyone”.
Workrate was among the areas flagged by the Munster SFC medallist that requires closer inspection from their players. “We have a lot of good workers but we need a few more lads to step up and put some scores on the board, Keelan kept us in it today as much from frees as anything else, it was a game for frees more often than not and we’re looking for a better spread of scorers, Michael O’Dwyer came on and added a little bit to us, he’s been coming back from injury, we’re still looking at new subs and hopefully someone will come on and make an impact but we’re happy enough”.
He added, “We had possession but we didn’t show enough patience in front of goals, a lot of wrong options, lads were rushing their kicks, I’d put it down to a lot of sloppy passing from our lads which hindered us and kept us back, we didn’t look as fluent as we normally do going forward, every time we turned the ball over we gave the ball away”.
Experience in committing fouls in defence helped the county champions hold off the lively Ciaran Downes of Kilmihil’s attack. “It got us over today, I don’t think it will work going forward, there’s a big improvement required all throughout our team, we have issues to deal with but we’re in a county semi-final and we can’t complain, at least we can go work on those things now”.
“I think Kilmihil put it up to us today, fair play to them, they played very defensive and it kept them in the game for long periods of time, no doubt a lot of aspects of our game weren’t good today, we didn’t take a lot of good chances that were presented, Kilmihil had a few as well, I’m a bit disappointed that up front we had a lot of quality ball and we didn’t put the game away”.
