*Stephen Ryan takes a Clare kickout. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
CLARE’s decision to vary their kickouts has not been forced by the absence of midfielder Darragh Bohannon according to senior football manager Paul Madden.
Saturday’s nine point win over Limerick also saw Clare achieve their highest kickout retention rate so far in this year’s Division 3 campaign.
Goalkeeper Stephen Ryan was encouraged to go short with his restarts in Mick Neville Park on a far higher rate than what has been witnessed in the league run.
This was more to do with adding variety to Clare’s play rather than adapting to the absence of midfielder Darragh Bohannon with a hamstring injury, manager Paul Madden said. “It is nothing to do with Darragh Bohannon being out to be honest, whether he was in or out it was the same thing, we worked a little bit more on our kickouts. The opposition are looking at how we played and what we did, they are trying to target us so we’re just trying to have variety to our play but hopefully the same end result every time”.
Rathkeale can be a tricky venue for some teams to contend with but Clare apart from falling behind with the concession of a soft Cillian Fahy goal, dominated for the majority of the tie. “We were up for the match today and we are up for every match, we won the last two games before this after a poor start to the league. Today I felt we were slow to start, we needed to move our legs, we were 1-3 0-1 down after thirteen minutes, we half gifted them a goal, Eliah Riordan their two point kicker is good”.
Madden and his management team were keen to be stronger as a defensive unit and it duly worked as they conceded only 1-6 from play and they coughed up their least amount of scores from their five games. “We set the lads a target from a defensive point of view of being more sound, we still scored 0-24 which is what we scored the last three games but overall we were a lot better today but we flagged a bit in the last quarter, it is natural but we wouldn’t be happy with it. There is competition for places, we’ve lads coming off the bench and putting their hand up every week and lads that don’t even get on the twenty six so there is a lot of positives to take from it. The big thing was getting the two points and after that you want to perform and the lads have been very solid in the league”.
Connor Meaney starting for the second game in a row at centre back added to this strong defensive unit. “That is what you want, you want to be able to give lads a chance and if lads go well at training we won’t be afraid to use them and that is the mantra. I will have lads coming to me on Monday morning that will be really disappointed they didn’t get game time and sometimes I just can’t answer it and tell them they just need to keep working hard, attitude is king, if the attitude is good and it has been to be fair, then they will get the opportunities”.
It was a cagey start from both teams which the Clare manager attributed to the derby element. “It’s a local derby, they don’t like us and we probably don’t like them which is natural in hurling or football with neighbours. We were coming down to their patch, in their performances here to date Down only scraped by them by a point, they are a decent team and so are we”.
After falling behind by the thirteenth minute, Clare put themselves in a commanding position by outscoring Limerick 1-8 0-0 over nineteen minutes. “It was 1-3 0-1 after thirteen minutes, at half time it was 1-11 1-5, it was forty five minutes before they got a second point from play. We’ve a lot of aspects we’re happy with but we still have a lot of work-ons, I know all managers will say that but we coughed up a lot of silly scores from switching off and the hard runs stopped for a few minutes in the second half, some of that is natural because lads are tired, that is why we bring lads off the bench but overall we’re happy with where we are”.
Now sitting in joint second spot alongside Wexford and Westmeath, Clare have no game this weekend before welcoming Wexford to Ennis on Sunday week. “Results this weekend will dictate where we are in the league but we will just focus fully on Wexford in two weeks”.
