*Seadna Morey. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
Both Cathal Malone and Seadna Morey are on course to be back for full fitness for Sixmilebridge’s second round clash in the Clare SHC, manager Tim Crowe has confirmed.
Speaking to The Clare Echo in the wake of their thirteen point comprehensive championship opening win against Clarecastle on Friday, Crowe revealed that the All-Ireland U21 medallists were set to be included in the starting fifteen when they meet Wolfe Tones.
Malone sustained a broken bone in his hand during Clare’s championship campaign and played through this in their second round qualifier defeat to Cork while Morey was not fit enough to feature for sixty minutes against Clarecastle but scored a point and set up Conor Deasy’s goal during his eight minutes on the field.
Crowe said, “We would hope Cathal will be back for the next game in three weeks time and Seadna will be back, we’re delighted he got a bit of game-time, he’s maybe a future corner forward for Clare”.
Talk of a three in a row slightly unnerved the former secondary school teacher. “(It was) A successful attempt at trying to win a Canon Hamilton this year. We don’t like to think of three in a row, other than if you’re from Newmarket (laughs), that is a fantastic achievement and it really shows when you see the last fifty years when you see how clubs have failed to do what Newmarket did and they did four in a row. It is a satisfactory opening. There was cobwebs there but some very good scoring and you would have to be pleased”.
After overcoming rivals Clarecastle in round one, they must now take down neighbours Wolfe Tones in three weeks. “We’ll treat Wolfe Tones with the same respect as we treated Clarecastle, that is the way you play teams, every club is very proud and we need to respect that and show them a respect in due course. Wolfe Tones are next and we’ll see where that takes us”.
How Clarecastle kept battling was a positive for manager Brian Russell to take from their heavy loss particularly as three of their most experienced players in Patrick Kelly, Gearoid Ryan and Killian McDermott were forced off with injury. “We were interrupted with injuries a few times again during the match. We got into it at various times and we responded well to the goals from The Bridge, we kept on hurling till the end, I know they won comfortably in the end but they are the county champions, we will find positives out of that game, we will have to deal with the few injuries and get ready for three weeks time.
“We’re still in the same position, we still have a chance of qualifying for a quarter-final, we still have a chance of Senior B and we still have a chance of relegation so nothing really has changed only that we have one game played, we’ve learned a bit more and hopefully we’ll be able to progress from that to the next day”.
For his first championship outing as senior manger, Sixmilebridge left plenty of learnings for Russell. “We found out what it takes to beat the county champions today because they are on a different plane, they would have kept on going if there was ten more minutes, I’d say the scoreboard would have been worked hard. We battled manfully as well as we could, we had to bring on our subs when we hadn’t anticipated but each person tried and we can’t put any fault on that”.
Their focus now switches to a second round date in three weeks with the reigning intermediate champions. “We have a big game against Scariff now. It will be us, them and Wolfe Tones looking for the second place, if they had a spy here I hope they saw things that might worry them and I hope we get a chance to look at their game this weekend so we might see what we’re facing. We’ve round two in three weeks time, we’ll be ready and that’s all we can do”.
