*A disappointed Shane Griffin at the final whistle.
LISSYCASEY didn’t get enough from their attack to cause an upset against champions Éire Óg in the TUS Clare SFC semi-finals.
The Clare Echo’s online coverage of the Clare SFC is brought to you by The Shannon Springs Hotel.
Six different scorers registered points for Lissycasey in Saturday’s loss to Éire Óg but their final tally didn’t hit double digits while missed opportunities also hurt their cause, manager Aiden ‘Horse’ Moloney maintained.
Speaking to The Clare Echo following their seven point defeat, Moloney stated, “We didn’t have enough going forward in the first half, we had a good bit of possession but we didn’t make enough of scoring chances, we had a few half chances but they weren’t really on. At half time we were lucky to say we were down seven points, we were still in the game, there was a nice breeze there and we thought we would have a lot of opportunities for two pointers in the second half”.
A big turning point in the game was a goal chance that fell to Daire Culligan on thirty five minutes but trailed wide, they were denied in their next attack when Conor Finnucane was blocked by Aaron Fitzgerald. “We had enough possession, the goal miss would have been interesting, I’m not saying it would have changed the game but it would have brought us back to three points and it would have given us a bit more, it was a poor miss, once that miss went in I think they went up the field and got a goal, the writing was on the wall after that. Fair play to our lads, they tried hard but we didn’t get enough from our forward play, nine points is not going to win many games, 2-10 is a decent score but it is not a big score either, the wind is a big help but it was hard to score against it”.
Against a team of Éire Óg’s calibre every chance must be taken, the 2002 Clare SFC winning captain noted. “We didn’t take enough chances, there was a lot of half chances for two pointers and we just didn’t pull the trigger enough, we didn’t have the confidence to go for it. I felt we needed the goal to bring us back into it, to give us a spark because when we were on top for little bits we troubled them, we had plenty of pace but we just didn’t get the scores and I think in the second half we didn’t get the reward we deserved. They got their goal and a couple of points, that was the difference”.
With eight of the Lissycasey starting fifteen lining out in their first Clare SFC semi-final, the experience will stand to them. “We had a lot of young lads out there, you can see Éire Óg are in their prime, they are a big strong team, they were physically stronger than us and I think they used the ball better and made less mistakes, that was the killer for us today, a lot of the scores Éire Óg got in the first half were from our mistakes like turnovers and bad handpasses, we held the ball well for the first ten minutes, that was good but when it came to it we kept making the little errors which were all punished”.
