*Fionn Kelleher of St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
STARTING with a win is the “number one priority” for St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield who are not short of ambition as they seem to overcome their quarter-final hoodoo.
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St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield Fact File
Management: Donagh Vaughan (manager), Eoin Troy (coach), Michael O’Dwyer (selector), Declan Malone (selector).
Joint captains: James Curran & Darragh O’Shea
Key player: Tom McDonald
One to watch: Diarmuid Boyle
Fresh blood: Liam Clune, Diarmuid Boyle, Jack McAllister,
Departures Gate: Tom Hannan (emigrated), Jack Hannan (transferred), Peter Collins (transferred), Kieran Thynne (moved to Kildare)
Treatment table: None
Titles won: 1 (1898 as Doora)
Last year’s run: Eliminated in the quarter-finals with a fourteen point loss to eventual winners Éire Óg
Schedule of games: Round 1 vs Kildysart on Friday July 18th in Clarecastle at 19:00
Round 2 vs Éire Óg on Saturday August 2nd in Cusack Park at 19:00
Round 3 vs Cratloe on Saturday August 16th in Clarecastle at 18:00
Championship power ranking (1=weak/unlikely winners, 10=strong contenders): 6
Successive quarter-final defeats to Éire Óg, after extra time in 2023 and by a considerable 2-14 0-6 margin in September have ended St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield’s cause in the past two seasons.
Since winning the intermediate title in 2020, they have been knocked out in the quarter-finals in three of their last four campaigns, losses in the 2022 group stages to Cratloe and Lissycasey stopped their passage to the last eight that season.
Donagh Vaughan is at the helm with The Parish for a fourth season and he’s eager for them to scale that quarter-final hurdle. “The target is to win the Jack Daly and go as far as we can to be honest. We want to get to the quarter-finals and progress past that”.
To get there, they must take one of the three qualification spots from Group 1. “It is a very tough group, Éire Óg are the standard bearers with three of the last four championships won, the onus is on everyone else to close the gap, we’re all trying to close the gap, they have been worthy champions, they are a massive team, the other three are threading very level, Éire Óg are the favourites and the other three are on par. With three coming through it is a bit more helpful”.
They start off with Kildysart this Friday in Clarecastle, the same venue when the sides met in the third round last season when Doora/Barefield lost by a single point on an afternoon when the sides were level eight occasions over the hour. “On the day we felt we let a lot of chances out there, we had a lot of wides, our decision making was poor, ourselves and Kildysart always have tight meetings, it’s all about getting two points for us this weekend. It’s our number one priority to win this weekend and that is the same as every crowd, we have to target getting a win in the first round”.
County panellists Fionn Kelleher and Joe Rafferty have returned to training after a brief stint in the United States after Clare’s exit from the championship. Joint captain Darragh O’Shea has returned from injury to further strengthen their pick.
Neither of the trio were available for the Cusack Cup final where Doora/Barefield took Éire Óg to extra time but fell short in their quest for league honours. “I think we got a lot out of the Cusack Cup, we’re still young and I know I say it every year, we still have youth coming through but we’re getting more seasoned and the Cusack Cup feeds into that, it gets our younger fellas coming through. We set out to win every game, we had no real goal to win it out, we wanted to progress as far as we could and we found ourselves in the Cusack Cup final, we’ve never won it, we were beaten in the 2010 final and hadn’t featured in the final since, it would have been nice to win it to follow up on the U21A success but it has been parked,” Donagh stated.
Vaughan was in charge alongside coach Eoin Troy when Doora/Barefield defeated Lissycasey after extra time to win the U21A championship in December. The bounce from that win has been evident since the start of the year, he felt. “I love the U21 championship because it is straight knockout, it is on at a funny time of year but it is still competitive. They had won a lot underage but senior is the natural stepping stone, it was excellent for them, a few lads got into county panel from their performances that day which is what we want to see”.
Their stepping stone now is about focusing to reach the last four for the first time since 2012.
