Conor Deasy loses possession to Cilléin Mullins and Oisin O’Donnell. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
SIXMILEBRIDGE may have picked up a four point opening round win in the Clare SHC but replica performances will not suffice in the championship, manager Sean Stack maintained.
Alex Morey’s tally of 0-06 plus 1-01 from Clare U20 corner forward David Kennedy sent Sixmilebridge on their way to a 1-21 0-20 first round victory against Crusheen.
Speaking to The Clare Echo in the aftermath of this win, Sean Stack was pleased to begin with a win but was quickly pointing out how they need to improve. “We’re delighted to have gotten off to a winning start. That’s always the most important thing about a first round game in that we didn’t set the world on fire with our performance but you don’t really want to either as you want an avenue for improvement.
“So we were happy with some aspect but weren’t so thrilled with others but it was a tough battle as we always knew it was go-ing to be. Crusheen made it awkward and credit to them too for what was a tough game but there was a good bit of laziness in our play which lends itself to giving away fouls. I mean we had twelve frees given away by half-time which is slightly worrying”.
Stack continued, “Is that a lack of hunger or a lack of appetite or simply not attacking the ball properly. Whatever it is, well address it properly before the next game. I’m not overjoyed with that performance but we’re hoping that by getting the win that it’s a release valve but we won’t be leaving anything to chance. We’ve work to do, it’s as simple as that so we’ll be looking for a much improved performance against Clonlara”.
Crusheen manager, Michael Browne was relatively pleased with how they fared against last year’s semi-finalists. “Obviously we were playing one of the top teams in the county so our aim was to go out and give a good account of ourselves, perform to the best of our ability and see what happens. Overall I think we did that reasonably well. We did concede a soft goal for sure and a few soft scores that shouldn’t have happened and we missed two goals chances ourselves and put two score able frees wide. So when you weigh it up, there wasn’t an awful lot in it.
“In saying that, the scores came a little easier for the ‘Bridge, they found space more easily, found their players better and were able to take their chances easier so I do think it was a fair enough result as they were sightly the better team. However, had things gone slightly differently for us, it could have worked out for us and we could have won it. So we’re gutted not to win it but we’re reasonably happy with our performance as we know that weren’t that far away. So it’s just a matter of working on those things for the next day and hope that we can learn”.
