*Lissycasey’s Aaron Griffin. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
LISSYCASEY risk their earliest championship exit in five years if they don’t prevail against Doonbeg in Sunday’s preliminary quarter-final.
Losses to Cratloe and Kildysart in Group Three have pitted the 2007 champions in a do or die clash against Doonbeg where the winner is rewarded with a spot in the Clare SFC quarter-finals.
For Lissycasey should they fail to secure the desired outcome, it would be the first time since 2018 that they didn’t compete in the knockout stages.
Aiden Moloney who is in his first year as Lissycasey manager is determined their workrate will have improved following their 0-13 0-08 loss to Kildysart last Saturday. “It appears that we got out of jail anyway and it looks like that we’re still in the championship which is great. The bottom line is that we know the problems we had today and because the play-off is next Sunday, we’ve got to go and work really hard”.
Reflecting on that game, the Kilmurry Ibrickane clubman stated, “We’re disappointed as that was a very poor second half performance from us. I’m very disappointed with how we applied ourselves in that second half as there a little bit of life in us in the first half but the better team won by a country mile. We had no answer to Emmet [McMahon] there, no matter what we did, we didn’t have the quality to be able to stop him and fair play, he is a quality player”.
He told The Clare Echo, “I felt that we had enough possession in the first half to put on a few more scores on the board but we’re a little bit individual up front in my opinion. We’re not connecting, we’re not bringing the other players into it, there’s not enough interaction between the forwards so it’s a little bit too individual for my liking and because of that we’re easier to control.
“It’s just something that they’ll going to have to improve on. I mean the day of the individual type play is gone. Now we have some good individuals but at the moment we’re not giving the ball to the player in the best position and I think that just sums us up today. A lot of ball went astray and we had a lot of turnovers and balls fumbled so we just weren’t to the pitch of the game today for whatever reason”.
Their second round win over Ennistymon was a major factor in sending last year’s beaten finalists to the relegation battle.
One of the key messages in their preparation for the Doonbeg tie has been to bring the workrate required for a championship affair. “The work-rate wasn’t there today, It was good enough against Ennistymon but today it was back to square one so if we don’t have the work-rate next weekend, we’re not going to cause anyone any problems. We’re just delighted that we are still in the championship”.
