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*Odhran Flynn of St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield. Photograph: Ruthie Griffin.
ST JOSEPH’S DOORA/Barefield “worked as hard” this year as the campaign previous despite exiting earlier in the championship.
Beaten finalists in 2025, The Parish suffered a twelve point loss to Éire Óg in the Clare SFC quarter-finals, a margin they made some bit more respectable by scoring two goals from Liam Clune and Tom Curran in the final ten minutes.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield manager Donagh Vaughan admitted they were taken aback by the margin of the defeat. “We had a lot of preparation done coming into this game, we honestly came in with high expectations, we’ve a lot of work done, the boys have put in a super year, I’m so disappointed for them with the way the game went, we got a few late scores and still managed to hit seventeen points but the game was well and truly gone at that stage”.
Thirteen points separated the sides at half time, Danny Lyne goaling with the last score of the half for Éire Óg. “It was but what do you do, you still have to go out and play the second half, you have to go for it, that goal before half time put them thirteen points up, I know we were ten down but that was a hard blow. The boys’ attitude has always been great, they said they would give a right lash and we went for it, we tried the few big men inside, we got a bit of joy out of that. Overall I’ve no complaints, I wish Éire Óg the very best in the championship, they are a serious outfit, let’s see how they go out of this, we’ve no complaints”.
Relegated from the Cusack Cup in June, the league had been a strong platform for The Parish last season where they reached the final, losing to Éire Óg after extra time. “It was out of our control, I remember one league game we had twenty two players missing, this year we had loads of our minors from last year come through, a load of young lads at the one time, we found ourselves in a funny position this year with the unavailability of players through county squads, U20 squads, we had about four operations and we were down an awful lot of personnel during the league. You can build momentum during the league, it worked for us last year but this year we still felt we were in a good place for today but it was just one of these days that can happen against a fairly serious outfit”.
He added, “The boys worked as hard as they did last year, this is the way it worked out this year, we have to accept it”.
