*St Josephs Doora/Barefield manager, Michael Guilfoyle. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
Losing out in the intermediate hurling final for the second time in three years is “heartbreaking” for St Josephs Doora/Barefield, manager Michael Guilfoyle has said.
A dominant St Josephs Doora/Barefield lost out to Smith O’Briens in the decider last weekend with the determined Killaloe men finishing much stronger as they limited their opponents to four points in the second half.
Guilfoyle believed it was a game that St Josephs let get away from them. “We were 0-07 0-01 up after fifteen minutes and then were only 0-08 0-04 at half-time having missed a few chances, we didn’t get the chances in the second half to push forward even though we were 0-12 0-10 going into injury time, it just slipped away from us, it wasn’t an easy day out”.
Despite limiting their opponents to just two points, Doora/Barefield still came out on the wrong side of the result. The Feakle native was annoyed with the amount of frees given to their opponents. “We had our man-marking sorted out and it worked very well on the day, to get 0-12 from frees was critical, I’d be very critical of the free count which was 22-11, we have done our stats and our tackle count was fifty so in other words half of our tackles were illegal, we don’t accept it, it was something we’ve worked hard on all year and I’m very disappointed with the way it was handled on the day”.
“It’s heartbreaking, we put a huge effort in as did every other team but we felt we had all our homework done but even on the day we still felt we were capable of winning it despite all the things that weren’t going for us but we couldn’t get it over the line in the last few minutes or create a chance to make it happen”.
