*Jack Mescall carries the ball forward for Clare. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
CLARE’S MINOR hurlers managed to overcome a bout of flu which transmitted through the panel and impacted on their preparations for Tuesday’s semi-final win over Limerick.
Preparations for Clare’s six point win over Limerick on Tuesday evening in Cusack Park were far from ideal for Brian O’Connell and his management with a number of players sidelined in the week leading up to the game due to illness.
Such was the extent of the players impacted that training last Sunday had to be called off with a third of the players on the panel having gone down with the flu.
O’Connell explained how their preparations were thrown a curveball. “Last week, there was a number of things, strep-throat, flu and whatever else. Last Sunday morning we didn’t train at all we had twelve lads who cried off sick, Tuesday was poor, lads were still recovering and on antibiotics, it did throw a bit of a spanner in the works to be honest but thankfully they all recovered. I think the last antibiotic was taken on Saturday morning, the energy levels looked good tonight so thankfully it wasn’t this week they were all sick”.
Maybe the illness could be factored in as the excuse for a sluggish start but Clare certainly upped their game, outscoring Limerick 1-06 0-02 in the second quarter. “We started so slow that any improvement in the second quarter we would have taken it. It took us a bit of time to find our rhythm, when we did I thought we were very good”.
Former Clare captain BOC was hopeful that reaching “two Munster finals in a row is a real upward curve for Clare hurling”. He added, “when Clare are playing no more so than the seniors at the weekend it’s always going to be close, teams get their purple patches and it’s what a team does in the purple patch that counts, I thought we did a good bit, the goal before half time set us up nicely going in at half time”.
Just over a month ago, Limerick had four points to spare over Clare when they met in the round robin series. “They say you learn a lot more about yourself when you lose, we had to really had to sit down and have a think about ourselves because that day we were so flat and didn’t play at all, in fairness Limerick were good on the same night so it was a combination of things, we learned a lot about ourselves, we learned a little bit more about Limerick. We were looking forward to playing Limerick again and I thought we responded really well,” the Shannon native said.
He was pleased with the manner in which Clare immediately responded to Dara Ferland’s goal which put three points between the times with fifty six minutes played. “It has died now but there was a stiff enough breeze there, it’s very hard and difficult to just get your hand on the ball when you’re playing into that, those two scores were massive for us, we didn’t shy away, drop our heads or go into our shells, they brought it back to three points but we pushed on and got the next two scores, that gave us a platform to go on and win it”.
