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*Kevin Harnett will be at the heart of the Cratloe defence. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
CRATLOE will always bring strong championship credentials so long as Colm Collins is at the helm and this season marks his twentieth in the hotseat.
Positioned in Group 1 where three teams will advance to the quarter-finals, there is an undoubted safety net for Cratloe but this cushion doesn’t guarantee a spot in the knockout stages.
Colm was in action as a steward at Pairc Michael Ui hEithir in Cratloe as the venue hosted a rare Clare SHC game last weekend. He then travelled to Cusack Park and was a nervous spectator as Cathal McInerney was forced off with a calf injury as Cratloe secured an opening draw with Clooney/Quin.
McInerney is one of their marquee forwards but is ruled out for the weekend, Collins confirmed. “Realistically if you go off a pitch on a Saturday night then it will take more than a week to recover so I’d say we can rule out Cathal for this weekend. He was in great form and playing great football so it is a pity, he had issues with his hamstring but rehabbed them well and worked very hard to get back, hopefully it won’t be too serious and we’ll get him back in action soon”.
Podge Collins remains a major injury doubt with a hamstring issue that kept him out of the first round while younger brother David who captains the side is also sidelined with a knee injury. Tadhg Lohan who excelled in attack in his breakthrough senior campaign is another player that Cratloe will be without.
They will be able to call on Tommy Rooney, Off The Ball’s GAA correspondent once he returns from covering the Mayo homecoming celebrations. “He has exclusive rights to Andy Moran, he has all the exclusive interviews with Andy so all journalists have to go through Tommy to get an interview with Andy so his pockets will be laden when he comes back to us,” Colm quipped. Further afield is London based Liam Markham who is eligible to line out for the side but has not featured yet this year.
For the second year in a row they face county champions Éire Óg in the opening round, Colm is well aware of what to expect from the Townies and hasn’t forgot their 2-23 0-11 loss to them. “They are a serious outfit, an excellent team, I had the pleasure of dealing with some of them at inter-county level, you couldn’t come across better lads, they are a formidable outfit and a very good side, at the end of the day you have to see how you measure up against them to gauge where you are at. I don’t think anyone will win the senior championship without beating them. We’ll see how we get on and hopefully we’ll do better than last year”.
Whether the gap between Éire Óg and the chasing pack is narrowing is “hard to tell,” the former Clare manager admitted. “If you went on league you would say maybe but they have been missing key players due to inter-county commitments so we won’t know till championship starts, that is when it starts and we’re the guinea pigs as the first crowd they will come across, we’ll see where they are at but the objective of every team in Clare is to see how they can come up with a way of beating them”.
All teams in Group 1 will be difficult to face off with but Collins said they will have no excuses if they are not one of the three teams to qualify for the quarter-finals. “You can hardly complain about being in a group with two seeded teams, if you’re in a group of four and three teams come out you can’t complaint if you don’t come out, we have a great opportunity but so does every team in the group, you have to get your act together and get them performing to best of ability”.
A three point defeat to St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield ended their involvement at the semi-final stage last year, the toll of having to overcome Ennistymon in extra time the fortnight previous evident by this juncture. “I thought first of all Doora/Barefield played quite well against us, a lot of the time when you lose a match you go looking into your own stuff but I think it was an excellent performance by Doora/Barefield. I’d love to have tidied up on stuff if I had my time back, we did have an injury crisis at the time and we picked up even more in that game so even if we got over the line against them I felt we would have been in trouble in the final. I think that from the point, we would have been down three or four more with three injuries in the final. It goes back to the same thing, not turning over the ball cheaply and staying in the game, our workrate and tackling has to be very intense and like Mayo did on Sunday stay between the man and the basket. At the end of the game we were unlucky not to steal a goal, there were some chances we could have converted but that is sport. Doora/Barefield are a fine team, they are a very young team so hopefully they show the improvement again this year”.
As he puts the final touches on the preparations for his twentieth campaign in charge of Cratloe’s top side, the thrill of championship is still as strong for Colm. “It’s very enjoyable when you have a great bunch of lads, guys that are very interested, that work and are prepared to listen, it is very enjoyable working with that group so as long as they are around it is enjoyable, you wouldn’t get the same enjoyment if you had to be chasing lads. We’ve a very good group of lads and we have the young lads coming through with Jamie Moylan, Marc O’Brien and Eoin Carey hopefully they will carry the baton on, the two Lohans Cathal and Tadhg have been great lads for us too and Cian O’Gorman is making the breakthrough this year”.
Cratloe Factfile
Management: Colm Collins (manager), Fearghal Carroll (coach), Brian O’Connell (selector), Jody O’Connor (selector), Paul O’Sullivan (selector), Seán O’Dea (selector).
Captain: David Collins
Key Player: Cathal McInerney
One to watch: Cian O’Gorman
Fresh blood: Cian O’Gorman, Ryan Boden (transferred from Kildare)
Departures Gate: Jack McInerney (travelling), Keelan O’Donoghue (travelling),
Treatment table: Tadhg Lohan (hand), Podge Collins (hamstring), David Collins (knee) , Cathal McInerney (calf)
Titles won: 3 (2013, 2014, 2023)
Last season’s run: Qualified from the group stages, reached the semi-finals but knocked out by St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield
Schedule of games:
Round 1 vs Éire Óg on Saturday August 1st at 18:00 in Zimmer Biomet Páirc Chíosóg, Ennis
Round 2 vs St Joseph’s Miltown on Saturday August 15th at 17:00 in Páirc Finne, Corofin
Round 3 vs Doonbeg on Saturday August 29th at 15:00 in Clarecastle
Championship power ranking (1=weak/unlikely winners, 10=strong contenders): 8
