*Shane Daniels and family with the Jack Daly. Photograph: Ruth Griffin
OVERSEEING Éire Óg’s twenty second Clare SFC success brought with it a different sense of pressure for manager Shane Daniels.
The Clare Echo’s online coverage of the Clare SFC is with thanks to The Shannon Springs Hotel.
Clare SFC’s roll of honour now places the Ennis club top with twenty two titles, twelve which were as Ennis Dalcassians and five as Ennis Faughs.
Shane Daniels has five Clare SFC medals as a player, Sunday’s 1-16 2-6 win over St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield was his first as manager, he had been player/selector during Paul Madden’s successful tenure which brought three titles since 2021.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Shane reflected, “It feels good, the heart isn’t great after it but we’re absolutely delighted, we had to dig deep and in fairness Doora/Barefield put up a huge battle and we knew they would, there is a rivalry and they are across town, they are a young team, very well coached so we’re delighted to come out the other side of it”.
Odhran O’Connell struck for goal twice in the first twenty minutes for Doora/Barefield but on each occasion Éire Óg responded with the next scores, four following the first major and two after the second. “They got goals early and at the right time, every time they got a goal we seem to get a few scores back. At times, we forced things a bit too much when we should have minded the ball better, when we settled down a bit in the second half I thought we started to control the game a bit, that is what we’re good at, controlling games, getting our hand on the ball and picking out the right passes. It was a good battle, the game had a bit of everything, a bit of drama, it was excellent”.
Experience, panel depth and composure came to the fore at the finish for the champions who scored 1-8 without reply. “We always have periods in games where we put together a high scoring block, we left it late today, a couple of weeks ago we started it early, fifteen minutes into the Miltown game we kicked on, we kicked a lot of wides too which was disappointing but you will have that and the pressure that comes with county finals, titles and doubles”.
Managing on county final day brings a different sense of pressure to playing, Daniels noted. “This was the first one on the sideline really, when I was playing I dealt with pressure okay, you can have some bearing on it but on the sideline you can make some changes and get lads going but there was a bit of pressure”.
Demonstrating this pressure was his habit of doing tuck jumps when certain things or decisions went against the Ennis club. He arguably went into double digits for the amount of tuck jump repetitions during the sixty minutes. “The tuck jump count wasn’t great today! There was some of those tuck jumps for joy as well,” he quipped.
