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*Kilmaley’s Michael O’Malley. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
WITH TWO wins from two, Kilmaley are anticipating a “tough” challenge from Cratloe in the final round of the TUS Clare SHC.
While Kilmaley are still unbeaten, their place in the knockout stages is not guaranteed and they’ll be aiming to finish the group stages with three from three to secure their safe passage to the last eight. They face Cratloe at 3pm on Sunday in Fr Murphy Memorial Park, Newmarket-on-Fergus, a win or draw will be sufficient for them to advance to the quarter-finals.
A one point win over Feakle in round two has sitting at top of the table in Group 2. Speaking following their 0-22 0-21 win, Kilmaley selector Conor McMahon commented, “Half-time didn’t look good for us. We were a point up at half time playing with a strong breeze. It was a tough dressing room for us. We just put it up to our lads. We needed heart to win this. It was a huge test and thankfully we came out on top.
“We’re delighted with two wins from two games. Cratloe will be tough. They put up a big score against Corofin. It was always going to be tight but most games are in this championship. Clonlara are there and there’s an awful lot of teams in the chasing pack. There’s nothing major between most of the teams.
“Michael O’Malley always shows up for us. He’s a great striker of the ball. He wants it so much. We’ve a few leaders out there and he’s definitely one of them. They got a goal chance there right at the death and they could have won it. Great bravery from Bryan and he does that time and time again. He just puts his body on the line. It could have gone either way to be honest”.
Feakle boss, Ger Conway noted that there has always been tight games between them and Kilmaley. “It’s always tit for tat between ourselves and Kilmaley. We’ll get one over them, they’ll get one over us and there’s always great games between the two of us. There were leading the quarter final the whole way through last year. We got the last few scores and got over the line. This one, we were leading and they were the ones who came up with the big finish. We’d a good goal opportunity saved at the death. Maybe if that went in, we’d have scraped over the line. Maybe a draw was a fair result, I don’t know.
“We have 20-30 lads training every night. They’re all entitled to a crack at it. You have to put faith in them. You have to put trust in them. You have to bring them in. There’s no 15 going to win a senior championship. You’re going to need four or five subs. We went through a patch in the middle of the second half where we didn’t score. We were up three points and we seemed to let Kilmaley come back and get the next four or five. It’s very hard to judge it only from the sideline so we’ll need to look back at it,” he added.
Facing Feakle in the final round is Corofin who are off the back of two heavy losses to Kilmaley and Cratloe. “After the first round, we had to pick ourselves off the ground. We got a fair hammering from Kilmaley. We said we’d go and try and express ourselves. We were happy with certain things. We worked hard. But we had metrics set out in our dressing room and they weren’t being met either so that’s disappointment,” Corofin manager Joe Cahill stated following their second round loss.
He added, “We’re down a few key players as well and it affected our game plan. We brought guys in and they did the best they could and it was great to give them the experience and see where they are at senior level. We’ve to go and play Feakle. From the outside we were probably favourites to be in that relegation battle. No doubt we are in that situation but we won the intermediate championship last year and it’s given us the license to come up and play senior and we’re here now. It’s a learning process for us all. We’ve to reset and refocus.
“Every club is losing players to emigration and we’re no different. But it takes a bit longer to establish young guys into the team and senior is probably a hard place for them to go and learn that. We’re disappointed with the result but it was an improvement from the last day,” Cahill concluded.
