*Dermot Coughlan. Photograph: Joe Buckley
Concession of an early goal knocked the sails out of Clare’s minor footballers prompting their exit from the Munster championship.
Clare manager, Dermot Coughlan was disappointed that the campaign which began so positively with a comprehensive win over Waterford to have come to a conclusion in Shannon last Thursday.
“We got a great start, we targeted that start but we gave away that goal early on and it seemed to knock the sails out of us.They done a full press on our kickouts and we struggled with it,” the Kilmurry Ibrickane man told The Clare Echo.
He continued, “We struggled with primary possession and when they tagged on that second goal we were always playing catch up. They turned over a lot of ball, the put a lot of pressure on and that’s the sign of a good team and whats more they got the scores out of the turnovers”.
Coughlan looked to the positives of their three-game championship run. “We got to use a lot of players. We used 25/26 players over the three games, that was one of the aims” he said that the main aim was to get to the phase 1 final and push on from that.
“We introduced a lot of players to inter county at this level. The future is bright. We are disappointed after today, disappointed with a couple of the goals given away. We have to learn from this”.
Coughlan believes that “the majority of those lads will push on into squads at under 20 level and the hope is that they will follow lads like Brendy Rouine and Brian McNamara who are now in Colm Collins senior squad. That’s the ultimate gain for Clare football, these lads pushing on”, he concluded.
