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*Éinne O’Connor. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
THREE in a row chasing Éire Óg have received a big boost for their title defence with the return of three-time Clare SFC winner Éinne O’Connor.
Wing back O’Connor who missed their successful run last season has returned to the Éire Óg panel and is available for selection for the upcoming quarter-finals where they face St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield in a repeat of last year’s county final.
Twenty seven year old Colm Walsh O’Loghlen is nearing a return to action, the star forward tore his ACL in last year’s semi-final win over Lissycasey at the end of September but is tipped to be named in the Éire Óg squad for the first time this year when they line out in the quarter-finals.
Colm picked up a yellow card when acting as maor uisce in Éire Óg’s commanding thirteen point win over St Joseph’s Miltown in the third round.
Éire Óg manager, Shane Daniels was hopeful they would be naming a much stronger panel as they enter the knockout stages. “We have a number of players that are coming back and working really hard, Colm is one of them, Gavin Cooney is another and Éinne O’Connor is back from Australia, they are working really hard, they want to get up to match fitness, the next couple of weeks will help with that so we will see”.
Such returns will heighten the competition for places for the Ennis side. “It is something we have put huge focus on this year, we want guys competing for places, we’ve made a couple of changes in every game we have played, there is fairly good competition at the moment and long may it continue, with the few lads coming back from injury it will even intensify it more so as long as everyone keeps working hard we’ll be happy with the competition there”.
Captain Aaron Fitzgerald is a major injury doubt for Sunday’s quarter-final against St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield, he missed their win over Wolfe Tones in the Clare SHC quarter-final on Sunday, a game which also saw Ciaran Russell forced off with injury with six minutes to go.
Finishing top of Group 1 with victories over Cratloe, Doonbeg and St Joseph’s Miltown has underlined Éire Óg’s ranking as championship favourites. “At the start of the year we would have said we were concentrating on our first game and getting off to a good start, we did that and followed up with a tough test against Doonbeg and another tough test against Miltown. To get three wins is exactly where we wanted to be, we wanted to top the group, we wanted to get as much as we could out of the league so we’re happy enough with the way the group stage has gone”.
Despite their unbeaten run, Daniels felt it was “hard to know” exactly what level Éire Óg were at. “Going into the Miltown game both teams were through so it was a bit of pressure off both teams, whether you won or lost you were through but now we’re in a quarter-final which is knockout football and for knockout football you have to be at your best, it is up to us to get the lads ready so they can be at their best for a quarter-final and hopefully get over the line”.
Over their last two games, the Townies have impressed with their ability to respond to opposition purple patches. In round three, they replied to Cian Mahony’s two pointer by outscoring Miltown 5-1 in the next few moments before bagging a goal via Mark McInerney on forty two minutes. “No matter what game you go out in there will be things that go wrong, you won’t be brilliant for sixty minutes so things will go wrong, it is how teams react to that is huge, It is something we have put a big emphasis on that when we concede scores we get our hands back on the ball and try work it up the other side of the pitch to get a scoring opportunity, we’ve been lucky enough in the last few games that when we have conceded scores that we have responded well”.
McInerney hit 1-9 over the hour with a nice supporting cast including Gavin Murray, Darren O’Brien, Ciaran Russell, Oran Cahill and Jack Joyce scoring two points or more. “It is something we work on all the time, Mark is obviously a good footballer and we know he will get his fair share of scores, other guys need to step up and contribute too, we have, we have guys that can score, there is no reason why they shouldn’t be getting a couple of scores in every game, it is pleasing to have a spread of eight different scorers against Miltown and we had that too against Doonbeg. The group stages have been fairly decent from an attacking point of view for us”.
After conceding three goals against Doonbeg in round two, Éire Óg came back and had a clean sheet for netminder Bernard Power in their final group game. “We’ve a lot of players who were upset after the Doonbeg game that we conceded three goals, it was more in their heads to go out and put that right, there was a fairly good response up to that and even until the last few minutes they didn’t want to concede anything, they wanted to keep the ball and go up the other side of the pitch. We don’t like conceding goals, you never want to concede goals and when you do then you need to react”.
