*Gordon Kelly gets away from Shane Hickey. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
A MONTH of a break between games in the Clare SFC managed to zap the momentum of St Joseph’s Miltown as they were eliminated in the quarter-finals.
An eleven point defeat to neighbours and rivals Kilmurry Ibrickane ended the involvement of St Joseph’s Miltown in this year’s championship.
There were no excuses from Miltown manager, Martin Guerin when reflecting on the outcome. “We were outplayed from start to finish and we just didn’t show up, these days you don’t plan to go out and play like that or not play but it’s very disappointing, there isn’t that much between the two teams but unfortunately they wanted it more, they showed more hunger and unfortunately we didn’t”.
Having secured their place in the knockout stages with a dominant 1-12 0-10 win over Ennistymon in round three following a second round 2-6 0-7 victory against Doonbeg. Prior to Saturday’s quarter-final, Miltown felt they dealt with the gap of four weeks between round three and the quarter-finals but it appeared to quench their momentum, Guerin acknowledged. “We thought it was okay but obviously something went wrong. There was great momentum after winning against Ennistymon in Doonbeg but unfortunately we lost that momentum, it looks like today that the month didn’t really suit us but Kilmurry had to manage it the same way as us and they seemed to manage it better than we did”.
Trailing 1-7 0-5 at half time, Guerin was frustrated that Miltown coughed up easy scores to their opponents. “The problem in the first half with conceding scores was that I think almost all of their scores came from easy turnovers and we handed the ball back to them on several occasions, we kept trying to go up through the centre, we didn’t use our width anyway whatsoever, any team in the championship you will not break them down up the centre whatever chance you have of keeping width, going wide and then coming into the scoring zone, those were mistakes we made in the first half. Of course, the goal changed the game completely but we were still in it, we got back within reason but unfortunately we played back into their hands in the second half”.
When it came to the second half, it took St Joseph’s Miltown twelve minutes to get a score. “We were trying to free up Eoin (Cleary) all the time, they were double and triple tagging him so he didn’t seem to have the support around him unfortunately, we had chances there to take scores but our execution and handling was poor today so if there is anything off at this stage of the championship it is going to be shown up in a quarter-final,” he told The Clare Echo.
Conor Cleary who was one of their standout players of the group stages missed the quarter-final having undergone an operation on his shoulder while their leading forward last year Cormac Murray went off injured before half time with Oisin Looney flying in from the United Arab Emirates in the days before the game. “Conor is a massive loss, he changes the way we play but they were without Aidan McCarthy who came on at the end, they lost Dermot Coughlan early on so the excuses don’t cut it, there was eleven points in it for a finish, if there was two or three points in it you could use those as a reason, they lost players as well so I won’t be making excuses”.
Given that they reached the semi-finals last season, to exit at the quarter-finals this year is a step back for the fifteen time champions. “I find it hard to reflect on what it actually is, every close game we played last year we died with our boots on, today we didn’t, we really were caved in a little too early in the second half, the game was there to rescue just after half time but we didn’t go and make a real effort to rescue the game”.
