*Jason McCarthy. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
INAGH/KILNAMONA are “backed into a corner” as they bid to remain in the TUS Clare SHC.
A four point loss to Scariff in round one leaves Inagh/Kilnamona in need of second round success against O’Callaghans Mills in Gurteen on Sunday.
Tomás Kelly said their first round display was flat. “We are disappointed with the result and the performance as well wasn’t what we had hoped for. We thought that we were in a good place but sometimes things just don’t work out for you and it just seemed to be one of those days for us. From the start, we never got going. We were flat and rather lifeless and we needed to be everything apart from that to be able to match Scariff”.
Led by the Crotty brothers who hit a combined 0-10 between them, Scariff were the deserving winners, the Clare U20 selector maintained. “Fair play to them, they were at a better pitch and thoroughly deserved the win. They made the better start by far but we did manage to come back and to be honest we would have been happy enough at half-time considering that we hadn’t played well but were still in the game. The second half started reasonably well for us but we just lost our shape midway through the half and were just chasing things after that so we have no complaints as we were beaten by the better team on the day”.
There is no choice but for the Clare Cup finalists to move on, Kelly stated. “We just have to move on now, we’ve the Mills next and really we’re both in the same boat in that it’s all about how both teams recover from disappointing defeats. These are two teams that are backed into a corner now and we’re under no illusions as to how hard this is going to be against them”.
