*Clare senior football manager, Peter Keane. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
CLARE manager Peter Keane has said there is a mix of disappointment and encouragement following their eleven point Munster final loss to Kerry.
Four first half goals saw Kerry claim an eighty sixth Munster senior football title, their fifth in a row and the third on the bounce at Clare’s expense in Fitzgerald Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
When fielding questions from The Clare Echo following their semi-final win over Tipperary on how big the jump would be for Clare against Kerry in the Munster final, Keane responded, “I don’t know, we’ll find that out as we’re going along”.
On Sunday, they found out exactly how big that jump was as Kerry reigned supreme and showed the gulf between a Division 1 and a Division 3 outfit.
Turnovers were very damaging for Clare, Keane said following their Munster final loss. “I think we started very slowly, and I’d say we were down 1-2 to nothing after three or four minutes. Turnovers hurt us. We had about seven turnovers in the first half, but we conceded 3-1`from those turnovers. That really hurt is.
“We went in at half-time well on the wrong side of the scoreboard, and I thought our lads showed great character and resilience in the second half. They came out and they fought, we had a couple of goal chances which we didn’t convert, but if you look at the scoreboard at the end of the day, it was the goals that were the difference”.
To concede four goals in the opening half was very damaging, he acknowledged. “It hurts you (conceding goals) and you’ve got to remember you’re talking about a team in Division 3 versus a team that were champions of Division 1. They’re playing at a higher level regularly, and they’re playing at home.
“I’m proud of the way the lads came out and, particularly in that second half, they didn’t lie down. They fought very, very well to bring it back to what we got. The thing was to keep doing what we were doing, but to cut out the mistakes, and improve the scoring efficiency. We were something like 40 per cent in our scoring efficiency in the first half, and Kerry were at something like 80. In the second half, they were at something like 90, but our shooting did improve in the second half because, in the first half, it wasn’t good”.
Offering a more detailed explanation on the gap between the divisions two weeks on, Keane stated, “The tempo of the game goes up when you go into championship. You’re playing against a team that won Division 1 of the National League, and that split second might go against you. That will only improve with the lads as they play better teams. That’s how you improve”.
Keane continued, “we had less turnovers than Kerry in both halves, but it was just that the turnovers that happened hurt us. You would be confident any day that you go out. You would be confident even before you came in here today that you could do something. It just didn’t happen for us today, but we are playing Down in the first round at home. Down are a team who kicked very, very big in their league games this year, and Division 2 was an exceptional competition this year with the amount of scores, for and against, all the teams. They will kick big, so we have got to compete with that”.
Disappointed with the result, Peter was encouraged by the second half showing. “You are playing in the Munster final, and you want to win it. All your hopes and ambitions coming down the road today are that you will. You don’t, so that’s obviously going to be a disappointment”.
Reaching Croke Park is now the target for Clare, he outlined. “My target at the start of the year would have been to get to the top of the table in the National League. We did that, but the follow-on should have been that we got promoted, and got to Croke Park. The promotion by-passed us, and we didn’t get to Croke Park. If we could get to Croke Park by year’s end, we would be delighted”.
