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*Martin Daly. Photograph: Ruthie Griffin.
FEAKLE’s failure to back up their championship success of 2023 has been “very disappointing”.
Since lifting the Canon Hamilton in 2024, Feakle have not returned to the semi-final stage in the two subsequent seasons.
For the first time since 2022, the East Clare side have failed to advance to the quarter-finals after finishing third in Group 3 with a first round win over O’Callaghans Mills followed by losses to Clooney/Quin and Cratloe.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Feakle manager Ger Conway admitted, ”We’re devastated really. It’s awful disheartening the way things worked out as we had our fate in our own hands, it wasn’t as if we needed anyone else to do us a favour but we just came up short in the end. We had the chances and of course so did Cratloe but from our point of view anyway, we left too many scoring opportunities after us and therefore we don’t have anyone else to blame only ourselves”.
He praised the honesty and efforts of the tight-knit Feakle panel. “That said, the lads put in a massive shift and it wasn’t for the lack of effort that we didn’t get over the line. But at the end of the day it wasn’t to be and small margins and moments just didn’t fall for us on the day. The Cratloe goalkeeper made two or three savage saves and on another day they would have gone in and in such a tight game you do need a grain of luck to go your way”.
Conway said, “It’s just very disappointing that we haven’t been able to back up our championship win two years ago but that’s sport. At least we showed the fight today because the Clooney game was a complete mishap for whatever reason. We never got to the pitch of the game and all day long we were off so it was heartening to see the lads bounce back and we were even leading in injury-time but just couldn’t hang on”.
